


And Nobody Thought To Look Up

by skybean



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Medical Experimentation, Medical Procedures, Quinx!Hide, Trans Male Character, Trans!Hide, Vomiting, Washuu Theory, autocannibalism, canon-typical angst, transgender character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-04-30 05:35:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 43,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5152250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skybean/pseuds/skybean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were two things that Washuu Hideyoshi knew about his life.  The first was that he'd never rejoin the CCG, as long as he had his way.  The second--that if protecting Kaneki Ken meant dying, Hideyoshi was okay with that.  However, protection from Aogiri involving the CCG means Kaneki has become Sasaki Haise.  And Hide finds himself enveloped in a project known only as the Quinx.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Act 1, Scene 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternatively, A Man Playing God

He had never given much thought to how he would die.  So long as he hadn't been alone when it happened, Hideyoshi supposed he would be fine.  It would be a rather noble way to go, he thought, offering himself up to help someone who needed the help.

After all, it was normal to want to help someone who had fallen.

Which was how Hide had found himself staggering down a sewer system, knowing with every step he took, that he may not come back from this.  Every step may lead to Kaneki, and as Hide had been told, there was no way to guarantee Hide's safety.  But Hide trusted his friend--he always had, and today was no different.  Kaneki wouldn't hurt him.  He never had, and Hide knew that to be truth.  Kaneki Ken wasn't a monster, would never hurt him, and never will.

Why did his heart feel so heavy?  With every step, Hide could feel his heart beat harder and harder, to the point where it was all Hide could hear, the throbbing of his own heartbeat, as if it was the clock that was counting down the time he had left.  Thudding beats over and over again, and Hide could nearly use them to count the time--his heart was going too fast, every three beats being about two seconds--and it merely increased the anxiety pounding into him.

There was Kaneki.  Those screams.  That sillouhette.  Hide would know that anywhere--Kaneki with those holes in him or not.  And so, swallowing for a moment, Hide put a smile on his face, walking over to the mutilated, but somehow still moving ( **GOD** how was Kaneki still moving?) form of his friend, Hide chirped out,  “Yo, Kaneki…  What’s with the get-up?  That in style these days?”

The rest of the conversation was short.  Too short.  And Hide said the words he had been longing to say as he grasped Kaneki’s shoulder--that he knew already.  That they should just go home.  That Hide wanted to ‘help.’

“Sorry,”  He got out and reached over to try and steady Kaneki then,  “can you fight with all you’ve got, just one last time?”

 _Since there is only one way into the abyss?_  Hide mentally added on.

He wasn’t sure who screamed first--Kaneki, from the pain and shock that he must have been going through, or Hide himself, from the sudden sharp pain of Kaneki tearing into his arm, tearing holes into the meaty flesh, before moving onwards, up to the shoulder, and to the neck.

He tried to not think about it too much--how he was being eaten alive, and how much it hurt.  Was this how it was to end for him?  In Kaneki’s stomach, dying so that Kaneki may heal enough to get away from Arima?  Hide tried to drag himself away, but Kaneki had snarled and pulled him back, and _oh_ how it hurt.

He wasn’t sure at what point he would pass out.  Hideyoshi considered himself happy to not have to die alone.

 

 

“He has days left, Director.”  The doctor’s voice was calm, detached--and in a place left in the wake of the destruction of the twentieth ward, it was unsurprising.  It had been only a few weeks since the end, and the doctor responsible for the care of Washuu Hideyoshi appeared apathetic to the young man’s case.

“The most merciful thing for him now is to take him off life support.  You’re only dragging out the inevitable,”  they continued on, watching the carefully composed face of Washuu Yoshitoki, before they continued. “There is nothing we can do to save him--”

“You’ve read the reports on Kanou’s experiment, and what Shiba thinks is possible.  You know _exactly_ what you can do to save his life.”  Yoshitoki’s response was cool, although it was a clear dismissal of the inevitable end of his son’s life.

“Sir--”

“You said Hideyoshi will die,”  Yoshitoki cut the doctor off again, with only the slightest bit of agitation apparent in his tone,  “and Shiba’s research is correct in that--regardless of what we do, Hideyoshi will either live through the experiment, and recover, or he will die--from a failed experiment, or from the inability to stay alive without life support.”

“That’s the thing,”  the response from the doctor was terse at best,  “we have no way of testing your son’s compatibility.  He may live, but at what cost?  He may end up with something closer to ROS than anything close to what Shiba’s hypothesized.  Are you willing to risk your son through that--”

“And if it doesn’t happen, he will die.  Find a donor.”

  
  


Hide wasn’t the protagonist of a manga, or anything like that--before this entire mess began, he was just an ordinary college student who liked to listen to music.  But, one could suppose, if there was to be a story with him written as the protagonist… it could be a tragicomedy.

The first thing he was aware of was the feeling of pain across his limbs.  There were needles in his arms, and a dull throbbing in his lower back.  Hide’s shoulder, neck, and arm felt as if they were on fire.  It hurt to open his eyes.  It hurt to hear.  It hurt to move.  Which was how he found himself hoping that at least one of those needles in him was some sort of IV that contained painkillers.  He needed painkillers.

There was only the sounds of a hospital room--a heart monitor, the air that came off the oxygen mask Hide was finally aware that he was wearing, the humming of the fluorescent lights, the vibrating of the air conditioning.  No voices, no sounds of violence.  Only the hospital room, and the drizzling from the rain outside.

Hide opened his eyes then, wincing at the way his right eye burned uncomfortably.  However, opening his eyes up felt like it took too much energy, and he felt his brain slip and slide around, trying to cling to any coherent thoughts, and failing.

Where was he?  Was he alive?  What…  What…?

Thankfully, he hadn’t been left alone for very long--or maybe he had been, Hide was unsure.  Time seemed to make no sense when he was left alone with nothing but it.  And with that, he watched his father walk in, a calmly relieved look on his face.

“I wasn’t sure you were going to make it,”  Yoshitoki said calmly as he sat next to Hide’s hospital bed, slowly pushing some of Hide’s hair out of his face.  “It was…  uncertain.  I’m so glad to see you’re awake, Hideyoshi.  How are you feeling?”

“...Hurts,”  Hide admitted after a moment, closing his eyes once more, as the effort of keeping his eyes open was too much at that time,  “hurts a whole lot.”

“That’s to be expected,”  Yoshitoki replied calmly, continuing to stroke Hide’s forehead calmly, smiling down at his son for a moment. “I have news for you.  It’s about your friend.”

“Kaneki?!”  Hide squeaked out.  He opened his left eye, the right one still burning a tad, and tried to push himself up a bit.  “Is he--is he alive?  Dad, please, how is he--”

“He’s alive,”  Yoshitoki began, biting his lip uncertainly as he watched the elation spread across his son’s face,  “however…  There have been some unfortunate complications--”

“What do you mean?”  Hide interjected.

Yoshitoki frowned a bit at the interruption, but decided that he would brush it off; after all, his son was unaware of the entire picture, and well…  There were things that needed to be explained.

“The naming rights will be going to you,”  Yoshitoki began.  Hide’s eyes widened then, and Yoshitoki knew his son understood the connotations.  “He is alive.  However, he experienced severe damage to his brain--he’s healed now, as well as you have, but he has no memory as to who he was.”

“What?”  Hide felt his stomach drop, as if the ground beneath him gave out, to let him fall down forever.  “What do you mean?  He…  He’s got to remember, right?  What do you mean, naming rights?  He’s Kaneki Ken!  He’s always been Kaneki Ken, why does that have to change now--”

“Hideyoshi,”  Yoshitoki’s voice was calm, distantly so.   _And of course it would be,_ Hide thought bitterly, _it wasn’t as if any of this affected_ him.

“He can no longer be Kaneki Ken.  Do you understand me?  Your friend’s identity as Kaneki Ken has been erased from everything but your memory of him.  You’ve told me he was kidnapped by the Aogiri Tree once.  Do you think that he wouldn’t be in some kind of danger, if he wasn’t given this protection?”  Yoshitoki sighed, slowly helping his son adjust to sit better, rubbing Hide’s shoulders then,  “Think of this as witness protection.  After all, if your friend looked for who Kaneki Ken--Eyepatch, Centipede--used to be, wouldn’t he be rather afraid of the monster he once was?  You’ve been given the naming rights for him.  The sooner you decide, the better.”

“Will I be allowed to tell him who we were?”  Hide found himself asking, moving despite pain to attempt to wrap his arms around his chest, wincing at the way the needles pulled and prevented him from doing so.  “That we were friends?  So he doesn’t think he was all alone, that nobody missed him--”

“No,”  Yoshitoki said sternly.  “As far as he will be concerned, he was a rank three investigator who was harmed while fighting a ghoul, and sustained a major blow to the head.  You will not be allowed to tell him anything.”  He sighed, pulling Hide into a hug, running his hand through Hide’s hair, “I don’t say this to hurt you, Hide.  I’m giving you the time you need.  You’ll be having doctors in soon, and I felt you deserved the warning.”

Yoshitoki left, leaving Hide alone for a few moments.  Moving to scratch at his arm, Hide paused for a moment, properly looking at it.

There shouldn’t be flesh there.  Kane--it had been eaten.  He shouldn’t have this arm.  But yet, it was fine.

Hide looked at the bags properly attached to his arms then, biting his lip.  He didn’t recognise most of them--a few of them were red, and Hide was assuming those were blood, another one was relatively clear…  He slipped the oxygen mask off, at least, finding it far too uncomfortable at this point to be wearing, and he slowly turned to try and get out of the bed.  Right…  Things still hurt, but he stood, not being able to move very far, due to the way the needles and tubes in his arms were being pulled.  His body shook to stand, but it was under his own power, and Hide took that as a good sign.

His body felt wrong--and not in the way that came from not wearing his binder.  Perhaps it was because Hide was so rarely in hospitals, from the emotional strain of the last time he was awake, and how he seemed perfectly healed.  Perhaps it was from just being in an unfamiliar place and not being allowed to bind his chest--after all, hospitals didn’t let patients do that, especially if their torsos had been damaged, like Hide’s had been.  But when Hide moved and felt an uncomfortable lump turn with him on his lower back, he had begun to panic.

After what had happened to Kaneki from having a kakuhou implanted in him without his consent, had Hide’s father done the same thing to him?  But after a moment of thought, Hide attempted to push it away.  There was no way that was possible.  His father wouldn’t do that.  He was overreacting, he tried to tell himself.  It was just a lump.  It was probably a bruise.  After all, he was in the hospital, recovering.  He was probably still injured.  He just…  He just had to sit down, and try to calm down.  If he could calm down, he’d be fine.  He was just panicking.

“You should sit down,”  a young nurse said kindly, leading in a few men.  Doctors, Hide supposed as the nurse ushered him to sit.  “You’re already hurt enough, Washuu.”

Even as Hide was sat back down, he took note of the way she said it.   _Washuu-san._  It was a name he hadn’t heard in a long while, especially not attached to him, but the honourific seemed more attached out of reminder that Hide was only being treated politely because of whom he was related to.

“This is Dr. Shiba,”  the nurse introduced,  “he’s the physician and surgeon who operated on you.  He’s here to discuss some things with you, once we finish taking your vitals.”

Hide nodded numbly, looking between the nurse and the man in front of him, not liking the way the man looked.  He was thin, his eyebrows gone, and his hairline had begun to recede.  Oblong glasses concealed low, lazy eyes, with Shiba’s mouth being consumed by a big, bushy mustache.  Something about the way this man held himself gave Hide a bad feeling in his gut--and Hide’s gut feelings had saved him more than once.

But he allowed the nurse to take off the oxygen mask, take some needles and tubes out of his arm--leaving the painkillers and a bag of blood--and take his vitals.  It was quiet, nobody wanting to speak, but after the needles were gone, and cotton and gauze covered with medical tape covered up the holes, and Hide was left alone with Shiba, Hide found himself wanting nothing more than to suddenly throw himself out a window and see if that would make the anxiety stop.

Shiba looked up at Hide after a few moments, the silence feeling as it it would drag out forever.  And then he smiled a bit, and scanned back down the papers, before properly meeting Hide’s gaze.

“Welcome to the Quinx Project, Washuu Hideyoshi.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tragicomedy: a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragic and comic forms. most often seen in dramatic literature, the term can variously describe either a tragic play which contains enough comic elements to lighten the overall mood or, often, a serious play with a happy ending


	2. Act 1, Scene 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so!! just to give everybody a heads up--this chapter deals really heavily with death. i hope that doesn't bother anybody ;;;; and i apologise for the shortness of the paragraphs; most of this was written on my phone while on vacation
> 
> Alternatively, The Man My Mother Made

A gentleman holding a blood-stained metal briefcase in hand knocked on the door of an apartment.  It was a gloomy Sunday, a storm loomed overhead, while thunder crackled across a grey sky.  But it did not rain.  The world was sobbing, not crying.  The door unlocked and opened itself after a moment of clatter behind, and the morose expression on the man’s face told the fifteen year old Hideyoshi all that he needed to know.  However, words were spoken, and as the case of the quinque of the late Nagachika Shirokani is put into Hideyoshi’s hand, there was a short space in time--just that moment--where there was feeling of stagnant air, nothingness, and as quickly as it had come, it had left, covered up by the low rumbling of  thunder, as if to remind the world that death at the hands of a ghoul is common, especially in a ghoul investigator’s line of work.

The man--Shirokani’s partner--placed his hand on Hideyoshi’s shoulder, while Hide himself gripped the handle to his mother’s quinque tightly.  “She said she loved you.”

And that was all that had been said on the matter.  What she had said.  What she hadn’t said--for instance, how Hide ended up with the ownership rights of the heavy briefcase, holding the heavy s-ranked koukaku quinque known as Screeching Ghost, and not her partner, not her husband, or another member of her workplace--would remain in the minds of people who were not her son, and that it would have to remain, for there was no way for those words to ever leave now.

Nagachika Hideyoshi closed the door after a polite goodbye, and retreated back into the apartment that no longer felt like a home.  The briefcase was set down next to the door, and at fifteen, Hideyoshi discovered what it meant, when people say the world is crying for a loss.

  
  


“I want an explanation,”  Four years into the future, Hide slammed his hands down on his father’s desk.  It had been about a week since he had woken up, and after that week of being tested, and poked, and prodded, he had decided enough was enough, and had proceeded to check himself out of the hospital, to make his way to his father to demand explanations that the medical staff didn’t seem interested in giving Hide at all.

He had an eyepatch slapped on his right eye, covering a grey-and-red kakugan he shouldn’t have--mostly to not alarm members of the CCG who were currently unaware of his… predicament.  The entire Quinx Project was _supposed_ to be something that the majority of the CCG wasn’t to know about yet, and as far as Hide was concerned, if he could nip this idea of his father’s in the bud, then the Quinx Project could die here and now, and nobody else would have to be hurt by the ideas that had been caused by a man playing God.

Well, that was what Hide had crossed his fingers and prayed to his gods for.  He had inherited his father’s wit and tenacity, and his mother’s gumption and pride, and Hide was certain that would be more than enough to channel to get what he wanted from his father once again.  He had done this once for Kaneki.  He could do this again.  However, as Hide met his father’s gaze, Hide felt his determination begin to crumble, like the edges of a cliff face crumbling under the feet of a person who was daring to get too close, knowing the edge wouldn’t support their weight.

“What is there to explain?”  Yoshitoki inquired mildly as he properly met his son’s gaze, as if this situation wasn’t as severe as Hide felt it was, “You were dying.  This seemed to be the best chance to save your life.  I wasn’t about to let you die.  You’re still human.”

“You know exactly what happened the last time someone tried something like this!”  Hide snapped,  “What happened to my friend was directly the fault of someone who attempted something like this.  You and Doctor Shiba can say all you want that I’m a human with a quinque in them, but the fact remains that what separates me from him is a little bit of quinque steel surrounded the organ we didn’t consent to being shoved in us!”

“You need to stop yelling,” sighed Yoshitoki.

“Don’t tone police me, _Dad_ ,”  Hide slammed his hands onto Yoshitoki’s desk, his teeth clenching,  “because without my permission, you let somebody alter my body!  You didn’t ask, hey, Hide, would you mind if we did to you the same thing that put your friend in enough danger that it would literally end with Arima stabbing him in the brain!  You didn’t even say,  Hide, we’re doing this to you to save your life!  You just went ahead and did something without me knowing!  What if it _failed_ , Dad?  Huh?”

Hide stopped to inhale, feeling a bit dizzy from the fact he didn’t breathe during his angry tirade.  However, before he could continue, another party cut across with,  “Do you ever shut up?”

It only took a look behind him to figure out who the speaker was.  Hide’s eyes went wide at the sight of the man that didn’t quite match up with the mental image he had in the back of his head that he associated with his brother.  And then he turned to Yoshitoki, beginning to interrogate,  “When did Matsuri come home?  I thought he was in Germany!”

“We needed him here,”  Yoshitoki replied, nodding to his eldest son by way of greeting,  “and you’re both expected to act your age.  You’re both adults.  Is this clear?”

Hide bit back any more retorts that threatened to bubble over, instead settling for shooting Matsuri an extremely unsubtle glare.  Expressing his displeasure with his elder brother without going for a blatant fight had been hard at the best of times; to say Hide and Matsuri didn’t get along was akin to saying ghouls and humans had different dietary structures--it presented an image that, although true, didn’t quite paint a clear enough picture.

Hide was sure that he wasn’t the only one in the room who remembered all the times he had tried to stab Matsuri with scissors in their childhood.

“It’s understood,”  Matsuri said, seemingly unaware of his brother’s thoughts,  “though I neglect to see how having both of us here is relevant.”

Yoshitoki let out a deep sigh then, his gaze tracing over both of his sons lazily.  He didn’t look old, but the sound was so very weary-- _and why wouldn’t it be?_  Hide asked himself, the realisation that Yoshitoki wasn’t a young man setting in--after all, Yoshitoki had been older than Matsuri when Matsuri had been born--and that had been close to--what, twenty five, twenty six years ago?  Yoshitoki was an older man now--and surely, watching his children squabble around like a pair of bickering hens tired him.

So Hide bit his tongue.  He could resist the urge to fight his brother, even as a dirty thought crawled into the back of his skull, whispering that yes, he really _should_ make Matsuri shut up.

“Your sibling is here,”  began Yoshitoki, his gaze meeting Matsuri’s own,  “for the latter part of a conversation we didn't invite you to.”  Yoshitoki gestured for both of his sons to sit down, saying,  “I will explain, but only once you both stop behaving like barbarians.”

Hide bit his tongue once more--this time for what he was sure was a deliberate microaggression on his father’s part.  But he felt his bottom meet chair, and his back pressed roughly against the uncomfortable feeling of the chair, which only served to irritate his lower back.  His hand moved to rub at the kakuhou he felt pressing uncomfortably against his flesh for a moment, before he glared at his brother, who, for his part, had sat down and nodded.

Yoshitoki sighed once more and pinched the bridge of his nose.  “Matsuri is here due to the fact that the Aogiri Tree is gaining more and more strength by the day.  In addition to them, the Clowns are also growing in numbers.  We need every mind we can have, and Matsuri is one of the best minds we have at our disposal.  It's a waste to not utilize him to his full potential.”  The words sound more like a lecture, Hide took note.  They're both being told the information.  After all, it was unlikely that Matsuri knew the entire situation.

“Hideyoshi is here as a direct result of his actions in the Owl Suppression Operation.”  Yoshitoki explained,  “In order to prevent his death, Doctor Shiba implanted a bikaku type kakuhou covered in quinque steel inside of Hideyoshi, in a process similar to how quinque are made.  As of right now, Hideyoshi is part of what we have dubbed the Quinx project--humans with quinque in them, to better their combat capabilities against ghouls.”

Matsuri frowned, before he looked at Hide.  “You have a kakuhou.”

It was a statement, Hide took note, not a question.

“Yes, I do.”

“And a kakugan.”

Hide reached up and removed his eyepatch then, blinking and wincing a bit, the sudden brightness hurting.

Matsuri frowned as he looked at Hide’s mismatched eyes, before he looked back at Yoshitoki, asking,  “Does he eat human meat?”

“Talk about me like I'm here,”  Hide heard himself snapping as he clenched his fists, the clenching feeling behind his kakugan hurting.

Matsuri’s look made Hide’s skin crawl--and Hide suddenly understood, in a way he hadn't quite before, why Matsuri had been given a reputation for being truly heartless.  Looking at the expression on his brother’s face gave Hide a sudden and alarming fear for his own life--a fear that Matsuri would end Hide, if Hide so much as dared to breathe wrongly near him.

“I don't eat human meat.”  He answered the question that hadn't been redirected,  “I'm not a ghoul.”

He hoped.

Matsuri kept that same, unwavering gaze for a long moment, leaving Hide unblinking.   _Stone,_  Hide told himself as he shook, _I am stone.  I am unmoving.  I’m unshakeable._

 _And then,_ he added on silently, _Kaneki was brave enough to face fear.  I can, too.  For him._

Matsuri looked away, and Hide relaxed, letting out the breath he had been unaware that he was holding.  That was nothing, though--he knew it couldn’t be that easy.  Matsuri wouldn’t take that as the answer.  Hide knew better than to assume that Matsuri would let this subject drop so easily--after all, this sort of human experimentation couldn't be any sort of good.

“Hideyoshi,”  Yoshitoki’s voice was cutting across then, bringing Hide back to this moment,  “although it isn't official yet, you're to be partnered with Associate Special Class Houji Kousuke.”

“I thought Associate Special Class Houji had--”  Hide cut himself off then, his eyes going wide.  If he was being assigned to Houji, that meant that Houji’s current partner was…

“I was under the impression rank two Takizawa Seidou was partnered with Associate Special Class Houji,”  Hide said, swallowing uncomfortably.

“Takizawa was on the list of casualties, Hideyoshi,”  Yoshitoki’s voice was weary,  “Houji needs a partner.  Once the official paperwork is slotted, and you have a quinque--”

“--I have a quinque.”  Hide cut across, clenching his fists as he looked into his lap,  “I’d need the DNA lock on it changed to match me, instead of the late investigator who left it to me, but it shouldn't be that hard.”

Yoshitoki’s eyes softened a bit, before he nodded, “Bring Screeching Ghost to the lab tomorrow, and it shouldn't take that long.  It's unorthodox, but it's better than attempting to outfit you a brand new one.”

“Nothing about this situation is orthodox,”  Hide pointed out then, sighing unhappily,  “but if bringing in that quinque works better, it'll be done.”

The conversation didn't take much longer, and Hide stood up, walking out of the building as quickly as he could.  He didn't want to be there, being in that building…  Hide fussed with the eyepatch as he left the building, before he pulled the hood of his jacket over his head.  It wasn't summer anymore; it was getting a bit closer to autumn, and frankly, Hide could handle the heat.  Plenty of summers outside had taught him how to do that.  He didn't want to go back to his apartment, not yet.

Hide pulled out his phone then, beginning to flick through names as he thought of the naming rights he still had in store.  Right…  Names were important things, he had been taught, and as such, he couldn't just leave the former Kaneki’s name to someone else.  Not if that someone else was Arima Kishou.

So Hide began to look through names, not surprised at all as he stopped in front of the Twentieth Ward office.  That was where Houji had been last assigned.  And maybe yes, Hide should have asked where Houji was, but at that point, he wasn't interested, mulling names over as he shoved his phone into his rear pocket, pushing the hair back, and cracking an obviously forced smile onto his face.

“Hello!”  He called, looking around for a moment, before he smiled at the woman behind the counter.

“Hi.  Quick question--can you tell me if Houji Kousuke got restationed or not?  He was here prior to the Owl Suppression Operation, and I'm not sure if he was relocated.  I know he's still alive; he wasn't on the list of casualties that the HQ released.  I’m sorry for the way I'm dressed; this is the first day out of the hospital, and word has it I'm to be his new partner.”

The woman sighed then, before she proceeded to type,  “Do you have some form of identification on you, sir…?”

Hide pulled a card out, sliding it over then,  “Nagachika Hideyoshi.  I'm currently an investigative assistant.  I've been told I'm getting tapped for a rank three.  It isn't official yet, but I've met Houji before, and I wanted to tell him in person… And express my condolences.”

A beat, and then,  “Houji’s left for the day.  He should be in tomorrow, to do a few more things.  As far as I know, since there's now incredibly low ghoul activity, the only CCG employees on duty here will be Bureau Investigators and the rest of the staff already here.  The Ghoul Investigators are being moved to wards where HQ feels their skills are better used.”

Hide bit his lip then.  Right.  That was the life of a ghoul investigator--continuous moving throughout Tokyo.  There were worse fates; he wasn't leaving any friends or family behind.  Kaneki was… A special circumstance.  And Hide’s other friends were part of the CCG.

“Thank you!  If he's in early tomorrow, could you tell him I'm looking for him?”  And without waiting for a response, he was about ready to push himself out the door, more than a little delighted that he could procrastinate on the day.

Life doesn't work that way.  As he turned around, Hide’s smile slipped as he watched Houji come in.  And Houji, to answer the secretary’s question that was unasked, merely said,  “I was intending to bring the last few things off of Takizawa’s desk to his mother today.  I left them in a box on his desk.”

“I'll grab them,”  Hide said, moving his hand as if to volunteer,  “I needed to speak with you anyways, sir.  I remember where Seidou’s desk is.  It'll take me less than five minutes.”

A beat, and then,  “Very well, Nagachika.  It's on his desk, right hand corner. Isn't very big.”

Hide nodded then, ducking behind the counter, and making sure to take his ID with him.  He looked through the halls, making his way to Seidou’s desk with a sigh.  Already, this place felt so much more empty…  Juuzou and Akira were already relocated to another ward, and Shinohara wasn't waking up, and then Amon, and Seidou--

Houji was right; the box wasn't that big at all.  Hide picked it up, looking at the top of the pictures with a small, sad expression.  Pictures were the worst.  And this one just so happened to be a picture of a dog, and a girl--Seidou’s sister?  There were enough physical similarities for it to be so--holding it.

He had read once, as part of a pretentious quote blog on the Internet, that people died twice.  Once, when they really died, and the second time, when somebody says your name for the last time.  And was that what was going to happen to Seidou?  To Kaneki?  That they would die in one way, and then slowly in the other.

“I'm sorry,”  Hide murmured to the girl in the picture as he began to carry the box,  “I should have been there.  I should have saved him.  He should have gone home to you.”

He walked back to Houji, a bit more quietly as he then smiled, calling a goodbye as the two walked side-by-side.

“She said you wanted to speak with me,”  Houji began after a few moments of silence as they walked.

Hide bit his lip, before he nodded,  “I do.  It's…  Actually about the person you're getting for your next partner.  I don't know the rapidity that the CCG does things, but--well, the Director himself told me and--”  Hide adjusted his grip on the box, scratching uncomfortably at his cheek.

“The Director and the Chairman tapped me as a Rank Three investigator,”  Hide clarified then, watching Houji’s expression,  “for multiple reasons.  First of all--I'm the Director’s younger son.  They liked how I worked with you, and the rest of the members of the team we had assigned to our ward.  And…  Well, I'm sure you'll be told soon, but I'm to be your next partner, sir.  I felt that you’d appreciate a heads up before you're given the abrupt notification.”

Houji didn't say anything.  Hide waited for a few moments, before he realised how awkward that this situation must have been.  He bit his lip awkwardly, looking down and away, merely following behind Houji for what felt like the better part of an hour, before they finally stopped.

“You can go now, Washuu,”  And this was _Washuu-kun_ , Hide took note.  It was more than fine by him; Hide wouldn’t have minded if Houji had said just Hide, no honourifics at all.  But that wasn’t how politeness worked, and Hide just handed the box over to Houji, nodding some more.

“Yes sir.  I’ll be seeing you soon.”

Hide walked for the entire ride back.  He wasn’t sure what had happened to his bike, though he was sure that the bike could be easily enough replaced.  He wondered instead, though, if Kaneki’s aunt noticed he hadn’t replied.  That he had been written off by the CCG.

He wondered if she cared.

It was doubtful, Hide determined as he climbed over a fence, paying no mind to where he was going.  All he knew was that he didn’t want to go home, not yet.  And where was home?  Not the main Washuu house.  He wasn’t going back there, not yet.  If Hide had any opinions or choices left in this situation, it was simple enough.  He wasn’t going back to the Washuu house until he deemed it appropriate.  After all, right now he was still his mother’s son.

What was it like?  Dying, that was.  Dying was painful, Hide was sure.  He wasn’t sure, what it would feel like to want to die, but Hide knew people who felt that feeling.  And frankly, Hide didn’t want to romanticise it.

He took a left at the curb, ducking just past someone who smelt like blood and rot.  Hide took a look back at them, properly, but before he could _really_ tag who the person was, they were already gone, and he stood alone on the sidewalk, not thinking to look up.

And after a long while, Hide made his way back to the apartment he called home for the majority of his life.  Pushing a spare key that he had kept hidden on the top of the doorframe in, and opening it up, Hide looked around the apartment that had been kept the same, looking the exact same as he had left it.

Hide swallowed, softly calling out that he was home, before he closed his door.  Peeling off his jacket, his shoes, and then the eyepatch--throwing the first and last into a heap on the couch--Hide made his way towards the bedroom that he stayed in, swallowing unhappily.

His room remained the same, he took no pleasure in noting.  Hands moved up, and Hide rubbed at his eyes wearily for a few moments, before he went to walk over to his closet.  Opening it up, Hide pulled out a silver briefcase, and then sat on his bed.

The stains that Hide remembered as a faded red were now a rusty brown.  The case had been dented--and Hide didn’t remember if the case had always been dented, or if the dent had come later, after the funeral--and it no longer shined a reflection the way it once had.  The case, of course, was merely holding the deadly weapon on the inside.

Hide’s hand moved to where the lock was, and it rested there for a moment, holding onto the briefcase, trying to get familiar with the weight it would be holding.

He looked at himself in the mirror, wondering if children were doomed to follow the paths that the parent who loved them least had set out before them.  Some part of Hide--the part that he knew resembled his mother in full--wanted to deny that with every fibre of his being.  Surely, parents who couldn’t be bothered to listen to what their children were saying would have nothing to do with them, yes?  Surely.  He had to believe that.  He had to.

And the next day, Hide began getting ready for his first day on the job.  With his clothing thrown onto his bed, and a binder for his chest in the process of being wrangled on, Hide found himself wondering if the low, arching feeling in his gut was what his parents felt, when they got ready for work.

Was that low feeling of dread normal, in a business of liars and killers?  Or had the CCG forgotten the value of life?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is anything certain? By the fall of the curtain, almost everyone’s certainly dead.


	3. Act 1, Scene 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I felt the need to put up some trigger warnings here--first and foremost, medical experimentation is the biggest one here, in addition to a lack of consent. This can be read as torture, and if that makes you upset, please go in prepared. Gender dysphoria's hitting hard here, there's some vomit. If I've missed anything, please comment or message me to let me know, and I'll make sure to tag it!!
> 
> Alternatively, Presentation is Key

Underneath his eyepatch, his eye itched.  It had been itching for the better part of the day--since he had walked into Shiba’s office that morning, and had been prodded and poked all around--needles in and out of him, checking his arm and side and prodding at the kakuhou deep in his back.

Turns out, it  _ was _ possible, if the kagune had been coming out, or dissipating, it was  _ completely _ possible to hold the entrance to where a kakuhou was open, as if it was some sort of deep wound that needed an intrusive object kept in there.

That had been Hide’s morning and early afternoon, from around seven am.  Being cross examined.

He had come in early.  Hide had been told to wear loose, comfortable clothing, which was to why his attire had been simple--sweatpants, binder, t-shirt, slip on shoes.  He had made a vague note that he needed to dye his hair again that morning, when he looked at his face, trying to figure out how much of the dark circles under his eyes had been stress, and how much had been a lack of sleep.  But he had rolled in, at seven in the morning, like he had been asked to be.

He had been mulling over thoughts, while waiting for Dr. Shiba to come in, and jumped to stand when the man had walked in.

“Good morning, sir,”  Hide bowed politely to Shiba, yawning a bit.

“Good morning, Washuu,”  Shiba nodded back, gesturing that it was well for Hide to stand,  “the Director wanted to test your regenerative capabilities this morning.  But for the moment, we need to take your vitals and such, before any of that begins.”

Reluctantly nodding, Hide found himself sighing as he cracked his neck.  “That’s like--what, my blood pressure and heart rate and stuff?”

“Loosely, yes,”  came the response as Shiba turned to his desk, pulling out a few needles and vials,  “we also want to see your RC count before we go particularly far; if you’re not above human levels yet, we may need to begin adding supplements to your diet.”

“What sort of supplements?”  Hide asked as the doctor turned around to tie a cord around his arm.

“It’d be similar to a tablet,”  Shiba said calmly,  “it’s something that both us and Chigyo’s department’s been working on.  You’re not the only one we intended on making, after all.”

It took a moment for Hide to remember who Chigyo was, but it was enough to distract him from the feeling of the needle going in, and the was Shiba took Hide’s blood calmly.

“Ah,”  Hide said, trying to keep his voice from not sounding disapproving of this entire subject.  He winced when the needle was pulled out, merely watching the blood clot, scab over, and then disappear within the few minutes it took for Shiba to write his notes down.

The rest of the vital-taking was quick--blood pressure, heart rate, lungs, height, weight--barely ten minutes, if that.

“How bad will it hurt?”  Hide asked, biting his lip.  “Gimme an idea, so I’m mentally prepared.”

“It’ll begin mildly,”  Shiba replied,  “We want to establish a baseline.  Ideally, we want you to be able to summon your kagune.  Have you even tried?”

Brow furrowing, Hide shook his head after a moment,  “I’ve been…  Busy.  My new partner’s been showing me the ropes from the inside end, and we’ve been trying to pick up the remains of the Twentieth.  It’s taken all my energy to become used to wielding a quinque again, let alone try for something that alien.”

Between the pursing of the lips, and the mildly disappointed look in Shiba’s eyes--an expression that almost makes the pinched man remind Hide of yet another teacher demanding to know why Hide can’t just  _ focus _ and stop acting out in class--Hide could tell the man was already annoyed.  And it piles up a bit of justifiable  _ anger _ in him; it’s not Hide’s fault he had been busy!

(He should really just reach over and punch him--wait, no, no.  Don’t hurt him.  What the  _ hell _ ?  Where had that come from?)

Hide shook his head, before deadpanning out,  “What?”  There was no way he had heard that correctly.  He couldn’t have.

“You’ll need to strip down to your boxers for this,”  Shiba repeated, frowning some more as he watched Hide,  “We need to test your regeneration in multiple places.  I’m assuming you don’t want your underwear covered in your own blood.”

Hide swallowed, biting his lip and shaking his head after a moment.  “Aren’t my arms good enough?”

“No.”

Hide watched the man for a moment, hoping there’d be some mercy.  But when Shiba’s face didn’t change, Hide slowly found himself peeling off the shirt he was wearing, simultaneously kicking off the shoes.  His hands went for the sweatpants first, choosing to pretend the binder he had on was suddenly  _ not there _ , choosing to pretend that no, this wasn’t happening.

But it was.  It was, and Hide looked at Shiba, who merely said,  “Your undershirt as well.”

Hide closed his eyes and slowly peeled off the binder, his arms instantly wrapping around breasts he wished weren’t there.  He kept his eyes closed, doing his best to squeeze them down as effectively as his own binder did.  Once he was sure that they were, he opened his eyes once more, looking at Doctor Shiba.

“So how much we cutting me up?”  He tried to sound confident.  He could hear the quiver in his voice, and Hide was sure that he looked as uncomfortable as he felt.

(Some part of him was laughing--how much this reminded him other, rather horrible things, in the back of his head.  Little  _ Utari _ boy, mostly naked, room full of  _ waijin _ doctors--god, this was sounding worse and worse the more he tried to think about it, so stop thinking, stop thinking--no, hello, thank you brain, please stop now--)

“Ideally, we won’t need much,”  Shiba replied as he heard a knock on the door, promptly following it with a,  “yes, come in.”

Hide swallowed and proceeded to look very pointedly at the wall, not liking as a few more male doctors walked in.   _ Right _ , he told himself,   _ this makes four doctors… _

“‘Ideally’?  Doc, c’mon,”  Hide replied, looking at Shiba--the only familiar face,  “I need an idea.  We gonna throw me to a ghoul and let it eat me again, or…?”

“Not hardly,”  Shiba replied, shaking his head after another long moment, sighing a bit,  “we want to see where your body’s resilience stands.  Regular weapons, and then quinques.  We can’t compare your flesh to a kagune’s yet, since your…   _ friend _ isn’t up for sparring.”

Hide swallowed.  “So.  Y’all are gonna knife me until I stop healing.”

“That’s a rather crass way of putting it.  But yes,”  Shiba nodded after a moment,  “and ideally, your body will react as if you are in danger, and your kagune will activate.”

“Wait, wait,”  Hide replied then, frowning significantly as he suddenly felt someone removing the eyepatch.  Jerking away--how had he not noticed that?!--he staggered into another doctor, yelping in pain as he felt a knife slide into him.

This couldn’t be happening.  Hide swore in pain, trying to jerk away.  He was out of shape, though--extra practise wasn’t yet working with him, with how crowded his life had slowly become.  But Hide tried to pull away once more, as an automatic reaction, even as one of the doctors slammed him head-first into a cabinet, holding Hide there while another sliced Hide’s side open with what had to be a quinque, judging from the way that his side erupted into fire in a way the knife hadn’t.

“What the--”  Hide tried to get out, grunting in pain when he was kicked in the back of the knee, being forced to drop down.  He made a few more pathetic whimpers, barely rolling out of the way as the quinque came down.

His lower back ached.  It was similar to a burning sensation, like something inside him, like a splinter, wanted out.  And as the quinque--even though it was a small knife, the blade the size of Hide’s forearm--came too close, Hide felt that splinter push out.

His kagune was red.  But they all were, weren’t they?  Red, red--red like the blood that he could feel beginning to clot.  The entire thing looked more like a long tail, fluffing out at the edges, orange noticeable in the ends--like fire.  And the way it pulsed, with low yellow vein-like things in it, made Hide feel  _ almost _ comforted.

(He really was a monster now.)

He’s not sure what’s more startling--the scent of blood, so much blood as the realisation his kagune slammed into one of the poor doctors, having thrown them against the wall.  But it had gotten them away from him, for a moment, and Hide moved to back up, the kagune swishing in front of him, much like an afraid cat’s tail.

“Can we please stop now?”  He asked, an arm moving to cover up one of the injuries, wincing at the way it had slowly begun healing.  That one had to be caused with a quinque; it wasn’t healing anywhere close to fast, and it  _ hurt _ like none other.  

Hide wasn’t used to pain.  Not yet.  Deep down, a part of him knew that one day, a blow like that wouldn’t bother him.  But right now, he was stressed, and afraid, and his body hurt, and if the kagune separated him from the people who were hurting him, Hide would gladly keep it up as a threat.  ‘ _ Come near me again _ ,’  his kagune seemed to say,  ‘ _ And I’ll do worse than push you away from me. _ ’

Not that Hide wanted to harm them.  He didn’t want to hurt anybody--it wasn’t in Hide’s nature, to be a violent person, unless provoked.  Well, normally--he pushed thoughts of his childhood that had risen unbidden.

“Ten more minutes,”  Shiba said in response to Hide’s question,  “and then you’re free.”

“I want to go now!”  Hide snapped in response, clenching his fists as he shook his head,  “You’ve learnt enough today!”

Shiba merely rolled his eyes, shaking his head.  “Keep your kagune out.  I need to see something for myself.”

Hide wasn’t anticipating the part where he was tripped and shoved onto the floor.  And even as his kagune thrashed like Hide’s own body, Hide wasn’t expecting what felt like a large, thick needle--thicker than a pencil, about the thickness of this thumb--to be pushed in right under his kagune and under the flesh.

When Hide was being  _ eaten alive _ , he wasn’t screaming the way he began to.  He wasn’t sure what was being forcibly shoved it, but then it felt like it was  _ opening _ , holding a hole in his back open.  The kagune dissipated, and Hide tried to jerk away, screaming more.  He wasn't sure how much of a hole it was, but he knew he was being held down, being prevented from moving.

“Stop it!”  He screamed, feeling a finger push in, pressing against the kakuhou inside of him.  Hide hadn’t been sure if nerves worked that way, but apparently they did.

He vaguely heard Shiba saying something about growth patterns and how Hide’s body was, but Hide screamed out again for it to stop, please, please, stop--

It must’ve stopped.  Someone must’ve made it stop--judging by the way the doctors were privately arguing a bit away, and another one was helping Hide up after a moment.

Hide pushed himself away, giving a rather nasty glare as he grabbed his binder first, pulling that on and pushing and pressing his chest around to make sure it was comfortable and  _ flat _ .  He could feel the way the open wounds rubbed against the uncomfortable material as he tucked the long item of clothes into his pants as those were slipped on.  The shirt came on next and last, and before anybody could stop him, Hide pushed himself out of the office, wrapping his arms uncomfortably around himself.

When he had worked the strength up, to pick up the quinque later that day, Doctor Chigyo hadn’t been in the science division.  Hide had fussed at his eyepatch, taking note of the way that people had watched him.  Granted, sweatpants and a t-shirt (and in retrospect, maybe some shirt that advertised some movie that he and Kaneki had watched so long ago hadn’t been the best idea) were no way to declare that yes, he was being serious about this whole ghoul investigator thing.

He never wanted to be serious about this whole ghoul investigator thing.

“I’m here to pick up Screeching Ghost,”  Hide said to the young woman who appeared as if she was in charge.  Yoshiko, the name badge said--well, he hadn’t had time to grab her family name.  Yoshiko would have to do.

She looked Hide up and down, slightly dismissive.  “Mhm…  I see.  However, I would like  _ the _ rank three investigator to arrive for their quinque.”

Hide clenched a fist, and slowly exhaled through his teeth, trying to keep as much of his already building frustration out of his voice.  “I do apologise for the improper dress, Doctor Yoshiko,”  and the way her eyes widened at the slight rudeness had done him no favours, he could tell.  Although once she smirked slightly, he felt a bit confused,  “but I  _ am _ rank three Washuu.  If you want, if you have the DNA lock on, I’ll turn it on myself and I’ll activate the quinque.  Easiest proof.” 

“ _ Well _ ,”  Yoshiko began then, with the slightest, smuggest hint to her voice,  “if you’re who you claim to be, then you’ll be able to open it.  Go ahead and try.”

Hide frowned, but reached over to take the quinque, sighing with a slightly annoyed clip to his voice.  “The quinque Screeching Ghost is a S-ranked koukaku,”  he began, setting the case down on the floor.  Fiddling with the lock, Hide frowned as it opened,  “originally wielded by Nagachika Shirokani, it’s modeled after a traditional  _ naginata _ .”

Seeing the quinque come out was like a return home to his mother.  Hide’s hands wrapped around the black staff with familiarity, the blade a deep, dark red.  Easily it must’ve been seven or eight feet tall, the blade itself two and a half feet wide.

Oh, and it was  _ heavy _ .  Hide winced a bit, feeling the struggle to keep the blade upright.  Part of it was from his own being out of shape, but part of it was simply from the weight of the blade.

Looking back at Yoshiko, a slightly cocky grin on his face, Hide moved to give it a few practise swings.  “It’s called  _ Screeching Ghost  _ because of the nature of it--the blade lets out a high-pitched keen when it moved rapidly.”

Not that it did.  Hide wasn’t moving it nearly fast enough; he was struggling with keeping the thing upright.  His mother must have been strong, in order to keep this thing in the air.

Hide moved to put the blade down and away, wincing a bit, before he closed the case, picking it upright off the ground and bowing politely to Yoshiko.

“I do apologise for my rudeness.  Am I permitted to leave now?”

“I--yes.”  She nodded slowly, waving a hand,  “I hope we don’t need to see each other any time soon.  People don’t come down here for fun.”

Hide nodded and smiled awkwardly, quickly ducking out the door.

Returning himself to the present, Hide felt his eye twitch once more under the eyepatch.  All he wanted to do was take it off and rub it aggressively until it watered and stopped itching so much.  It wouldn’t take much--though, granted, it would out him as a new monster that the CCG would be using….

He wasn’t sure which was worse.  That, or the sensations of burning under his skin.  He could feel where he hadn’t completely healed up; could feel how he had sloppily bandaged everything over.  It burned, agonisingly so, and Hide was sure that the way his body seemed to  _ pulse _ out of some sort of misguided attempt to heal, that he was bleeding under his pristine white dress uniform.  He was sure that, in the hassle it had been to get the uniform on properly, that his binder had slipped and--

For a moment, Hide could have sworn he saw a swell where breasts were.  He blinked and tried to swallow politely, feeling the attention on him as his father continued to speak--something about continuing on a legacy in the darkness, about how the CCG moved onward with each new generation.  Nothing Hide took note of.

Could they see?  Could they tell?  Was it noticeable his face was softer than his father’s and brother’s, not from age, but from gender?  Was it noticeable, the way his chest extended out from body parts smashed under?  Hide was sure it was.  It had to have been, the way people continued to stare at him.

He was panicking.  He knew that, on some logical level, that was normally in charge of Hide.  (He should take his eyepatch off.  Out himself as a monster.  Death would be quick--wait, wait, no, no, now was  _ not _ the time for this--)

Wait, wait--he was being promoted.  He bowed politely when he was announced, the way he knew he was supposed to.  He could hear mumblings--how  _ wrong _ this was.  How these two were getting free rides in--

Two?   _ Two _ ?  

Hide straightened himself to stand properly, finally looking at the other newly-appointed rank three next to him.  Ah.   _ Him _ .  Right.  In a strange twist of fate, for a moment, Hide had nearly forgotten.

Who else was being promoted?  Hide tried to keep track--and watched Mado Akira and Suzuya Juuzou be awarded their new rank of Rank One.  Associate Special Class Houji to Special Class.  And then, of course, came various awards and medals.

Hide felt like he was screaming on the inside.  His chest was tight, and he was pressed against people, and people were watching, and staring, and they were talking about him, he could feel it--he could feel their eyes on him, he could feel how he was too big for his own skin, and it was driving him  _ mad. _

As soon as the ceremony itself was over, Hide went for the bathroom.  He said thanks as appropriate, from everybody who stopped to congratulate this young and mysterious Washuu who had seemingly appeared from nowhere.  But once he had made his way in, Hide gagged, running for the nearest toilet and beginning to vomit after a few moments.

Once his stomach was emptied, and Hide was sure the only thing left inside of him to vomit was his own anxiety, he quietly closed the door.  Flushing the toilet with his foot, Hide unbuttoned his suit until he could fiddle with his binder, readjusting everything as he grumbled away the sour taste in his mouth.

And then his clothing was put back on, and Hide made his way to the mirror, rinsing his mouth out, before he caught his own reflection.

When did his smiles and laughter become so drained away?  He looked in the mirror, looking at the mess of hair that was now clinging to his clammy neck, having begun the process of falling out of the ponytail he had tied his hair back into for the promotion.  The only smile he could see was a fast-fading quickly thrown up thing, as if Hide was afraid to let people see the cracks that were under his own skin.

He pushed a finger under the eyepatch, rubbing at his eye uncomfortably, before he stopped, hearing a person stop behind him.

“Uhm….  You’re Rank Three Washuu, yes?”

_ No.  I’m Nagachika Hideyoshi.  I’m your best friend. _

“Yeah,”  Hide muttered, pulling his finger out from behind to look at the young man who could have easily been a match for a dear friend,  “I am.  And you’re…?”

_ Sasaki Haise _ .

“I want to call him Sasaki Haise.”

The memory is so easy to listen to.  Hide can easily remember it.  After all, it was recent enough….

“That’s an unusual name,”  Yoshitoki had commented,  “sounds almost like  _ heißen _ , if one is to be completely honest.”

Hide bit his lip, before he said calmly,  “Western way is read Haise Sasaki.  I felt it was appropriate for him.”

It was a message, really.  Heißen Sasaki.  To be called Sasaki.  Hide was trying to tell him, in a less-than-obvious way, that this name was only temporary, this existence as an investigator was only temporary.

Hide hoped.

“I've heard about you,”  Hide grunted to Haise after a moment, pulling his thoughts back to the current moment,  “You're with Special Class Arima and Squad Zero, aren't you?”

Haise smiled uncomfortably, merely nodding after a moment.  “Is that…  _ All _ you heard about me?”

“It's the only thing I get a right to be biased about,”  Hide replied evenly, watching the look on Haise’s face.  Haise’s face spelt out confusion, a bit of hurt, and a clear bit of anxiety.

Hide bit his lip, and decided to take pity on Haise.  There was no point to be cruel about it, after all.  Reaching up, Hide slipped off his eyepatch, watching Haise’s eyes widen.

“You're just like me,”  Haise said after a long moment, watching Hide nervously.

“Sort of,”  Hide put the eyepatch back on, blinking awkwardly,  “the CCG wanted to try and improve on you--they wanted something more like a human with a quinque in them.  I was dying.  Worked out for them.”

“Why would they do that?”  Haise’s voice was quiet as he asked the question, before he added on,  “I mean--you’re a Washuu.  Regardless of whether or not you were dying, it seems to be an awfully large risk…”

Hide shrugged then, realising that no, he had no ideas as to why, either.  “I was told it was either die after extended injuries, or go through with this.  I’m not sure I like it, but hey--anything to not die.”

“What academy did you graduate from?”  Haise asked softly,  “I mean--you’d be a rank two then, right?  Isn’t that how it works?”

Hide bit his lip, before he looked around the bathroom.  Dropping his voice down an octave,  “I want to tell you something.  You can’t tell  _ anybody _ .  Not Arima, not your squad, not my father--not anybody.”

Haise blinked, but nodded after a moment.  Hide sighed, and swallowed,  “You and I are the forerunners of a project that is known as the Quinx project.  The idea--humans with quinque in them.  They found you--whomever you used to be--as a victim of a mad scientist known as Dr. Kanou’s project.  I’m sure you knew that.  You’re artificially a ghoul.  The CCG wanted to try Kanou’s experiments, but better.  I was dying.  So either they’d get what they want, or they’ve lost nothing from trying.”

Hide rubbed his lower back then.  “I’m getting this feeling that I’m not the only one that they’re going to use.  I wanted to warn you--but you can’t tell anybody, Sasaki.  You’re going to be in danger, if anybody finds out you know.  I’ll help you as best as I can, but truth is, I’m only an investigator by complete accident.  I need you to trust me.”

Haise’s eyes widened in shock, before he said,  “Wait--why would they want that?  Why--why are you telling me this?  What do you gain from telling me this?”

Hide shook his head.  “Nothing.  They don’t want me sharing.  But…  The CCG isn’t anybody’s friend but its own, Sasaki.  I want to help you.  But I need you to let me.”

Haise nodded after a moment, swallowing nervously.  “I will.  But we need to get back out, before anybody else notices we’re missing…  I’m actually supposed to be getting you.  Your father sent me to get you.”

Hide winced.  “Yeah.  Let’s get going then.”

And so, they both walked out of the bathroom, and began to mingle, putting up a new mask that a ghoul would be familiar with--the mask of not changing to match the walls, but acting as if they belonged, and the walls began to change to match them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Intrusive thoughts seem to come from outside of one’s control, and their content feels alien and threatening. (source: Martin N. Seif, PhD)


	4. Act 1, Scene 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternatively, Those Whom Never Ask

Hide came to learn how easily Screeching Ghost was knocked out of his hands by Chi Shie.   


Hide and Houji tend to end up sparring often, as time moved on at the Twentieth Ward’s CCG office.  This is easily their third or fourth time sparring, since Hide received the quinque that was once more on the floor.  

Hide backed up when the naginata hit the floor, moving in an awkward way to narrowly dodge the rest of the blow that he knows Houji has no problem completing.

“You dropped it again,”  Houji commented as he finished the swing that would have cut Hide across the torso, had Hide stood still, as Hide had been formerly doing.

“I did.”  Hide nodded, eyeing between his mentor and his quinque, trying to figure if it was possible to make a break for the quinque and grab it.

“You’re not holding your quinque right,”  There was a silent ‘ _ again _ ’ added onto the rest of the statement, Hide knew.  Houji frowned, pinching the bridge of his nose for a moment.

Hide stopped for a beat, trying to figure if this conversation would lead to some form of lecture.  “I thought I was,”  came Hide’s weak response, once he realised there was no lecture coming,  “my apologies.”

Hide wasn’t expecting the quinque to be picked up, wasn’t expecting Houji to set aside his own weapon, wasn’t expecting Houji to stand next to Hide, explaining once more, with the tone of someone who had far, far too much patience that was slowly being whittled down,  “When you’re holding your weapon, there’s many grips you can use,”  Houji began,  “but this is your basic and primary grip--one hand on either side, above and below.”

Houji demonstrated then, placing his right hand above the shaft of the naginata, close to the pommel, his left hand further up the shaft, closer to his and Hide’s bodies, keeping it under the padding, while keeping the blade pointed away from them both.

“Like so.  The other main grip is having both of your hands on the same side of the naginata, although that’s primarily for high stances, where you’ll be moving your quinque above your head, which you’ll learn after I trust you to not drop it on yourself.”

Hide nodded, taking his weapon back and mirroring the grip, frowning as he tried to adjust it for something slightly comfier..  “...Is there a difference between right and left-handed grips?”

“The left hand handed grips are primarily for traditionally breaking shields,”  Houji replied, moving to adjust Hide’s grip back to the proper grip, before moving Hide’s hands to show him the left-handed grip.

Hide nodded once more, before he moved the quinque back into his right hand.  “So, attacks.  I somewhat remember them…?”  Trailing off, Hide moved, going to demonstrate.  Maybe they should have done this from the get-go, but Hide had pride.  And his pride was going to get him killed, it seemed.

Hide moved his body in a stiff, full bodied turn, starting from his hips.  Letting Screeching Ghost move and slip so it was gripped tightly in both hands at the pommel, Hide took another turn, attempting to slam the quinque down on an imagined ghoul, only to lose control, swinging towards Hide’s own body.  Letting out a yelp of shock, Hide let go of the weapon, backing up as best as he could.

Hide could  _ hear _ Houji groaning softly, and Hide was  _ sure _ it wasn’t intentional, but he could hear Houji asking,  “How have you not cut your own fingers off?”

Hide laughed awkwardly, just looking away from Houji.  He felt like he was pointedly ignoring the man’s face, unwilling to make eye contact, but at that point, Hide was sure that yes, Houji could figure it out.  Pushing his left hand behind his back, Hide swallowed for a moment, trying to not think about how two nights ago, he had indeed spun the quinque around and cut his own fingers off.

It had been bloody, Hide first took note, once the initial shock and pain of his fingers being  _ gone _ had finally passed through his system.  He panicked--he didn’t know what to do, in all honesty, but there were fingers on his floor, and he had to get them cleaned up before someone came in so Hide did what seemed like the most logical thing, to his very hungry mind.

Hide had shoved one of his fingers into his mouth, and to his horror, it had tasted  _ delicious _ …  And the one finger then led to the others, as Hide found that he tasted so very delicious; he could have passed off his own flesh as an incredibly tender, but more bitter than usual type of pork.  And  _ oh _ , it was so delicious, and even as Hide had felt his kakugan flicker on, he found himself thinking that yes, he could understand why there were some ghouls who relished in eating human flesh.

He was so disgusting, wasn’t he?  

Hide began lapping at the blood around his slowly regenerating fingers, agitating the scabs that were trying to form so he could continue downing his own blood, moaning a bit from how good it was.  It was mouthwatering, and all he wanted to do was  _ bite down and start eating some more-- _

No!  No, no, he couldn’t…

“Good luck?”  Hide replied to Houji then.  Hide began rubbing where he had removed the fingers anxiously,  “I mean, I gotta be lucky, to go through what I have.”

Houji watched Hide for a long moment, and Hide could count the breaths taken.  Houji nodded though, and then said,  “Let’s get you to practise some basic maneuvers, and then you can ease your way into more complicated things.  We have fieldwork tomorrow; there’s leads on some ghouls trying to ease in where Anteiku left.”

Hide nodded, properly gripping Screeching Ghost and putting his feet solidly on the floor.  Feeling his chest flutter in pain, his binder clenching around his torso in a way that was pleading with Hide to stop and take it of, Hide merely said;  “Alright then.  Show me how this works.”

Houji nodded,  “Most of your work is four moves and two stances.  You’re going to work in low stance unless absolutely needed, or I feel like you’re not at risk for cutting your head off--”

“Was that a joke?”  Hide grinned a bit,  “I won’t cut my head off!  Just the fingers.  Those can grow back.”

Houji merely gave Hide the kind of look that a dad who was tired of joking around would give his son, before he shook his head,  “Blade starts near the ground, at mid-calf for your low stance, Hideyoshi.  Underhand goes near the half padding, your overhand on the pommel of your quinque.  It’ll give you better control, speed, and power over your blows.  Put your feet shoulder width apart.  Front foot is facing the tip of your quinque, back foot should be perpendicular to the front foot..  Most of the attacks in this stance are aimed at feet and legs.”

“Yes sir,”  Hide nodded, moving appropriately--hands adjusting back to how Houji ordered, moving his feet to stand as he was told.  Feeling his weight distribute better, Hide smiled a bit, nodding once more,  “so what maneuvers do I do in this stance?”

“There’s four basic maneuvers in this form,”  Houji replied, moving to pick Chi Shie up once more, taking his own stance to juxtapose Hide,  “we’ll call them by colours--blue is a simple one-handed slash.  Green is a one-handed stab, and will most likely not go through any armor a ghoul may have.  Double Green is a two-handed stab that will go through armor.  Red is a two-handed slash that will break any shields or armor of a ghoul with two slashes across.  When stabbing, shift your body’s weight forward, and pivot your feet.  The most effective way with as little damage to your own body, or leaving openings is to use a green or a double green, and follow it up with a red.  When doing that, pivot your feet and twist at your hips for the reds, to allow yourself the ability to move.”

“This leaves me open for a ghoul to grab my weapon,”  Hide said after a moment, slowly trying to keep up with where Houji was going.

“Ideally, you’re strong enough to prevent that.  That’s also what your kagune is presumably for, assuming you’ve learnt anymore about how you’re going to be using that thing,”  Houji countered, before continuing,  “I’ll call your shots, you make them, I block them.  And then we switch and you call your shots and make them.”

Hide nodded, moving to stand comfortably once more,  “Got it.”

“Green,”  Houji called.

Hide lunged forward.  It was stiff, with the way his legs moved, extending his entire body, pushing his arms out for a better reach.  Hide did his best to twist, trying to keep the stance correct as he felt the weight of his quinque protest and try to slip down.  It wasn’t a surprise when Houji blocked him, and Hide stepped back, moving back to his stance.

“Not the worst I’ve seen you do.  Double green.”

And so forth--Hide adjusted, coming in with a stiff and forced two-handed lunge, continuing to move more-or-less back into the one spot, unless Houji forced Hide to move around the training mats.  Red--two-handed slashes.  Blue--one handed slash.  Red, double green, step back, green, blue--two-handed slash, two-handed lunge, back up and reposition, one-handed lunge, one handed slash.

The various patterns and combinations continued, with Hide and Houji switching the calling.  They kept at it for what felt like hours, only stopping when they both realised it was now dark outside, and the clock was showing eight-thirty at night.

“Practise,”  Houji said after a moment, watching Hide set his quinque down and lean forward, resting hands on knees,  “and before you know it, the maneuvers will come naturally.  You said you used to do this?  Then your body should begin remembering.  It’s like riding a bike.”

“Yeah,”  grunted Hide in response, before he picked up Screeching Ghost and began to put it away,  “but in this kind of bike, it’s like the last time I rode a bike, it had no gears, and it was on a flat city path, and now I’m relearning a mountain bike while biking outside the small, remote mountain village my  _ huci _ lives in.”

“Your…?”

“Ah--sorry.  My grandmother on my mother’s side,”  Hide sheepishly put a hand behind his head, before he groaned, beginning to curl up once more and cough.

He was in so much pain.  It hurt more now, than it had earlier, though considering how Hide had let his body just stand and move and take the punishment he had been dishing at it for hours, it was no wonder.

His lungs and rib cage felt like they were throbbing, on the verge of shattering, and Hide was dizzy, unsure if he’d be able to make it to the locker room.  He felt like he was going to  _ die _ and--

Hide pushed himself to stand, feeling the ground sway.  Hide felt his lungs tighten and try to get air that wasn’t coming.  He must have broken a rib again, Hide thought; it felt like it, with the way every breath hurt to take.

“I-I need to sit down for a moment…”  Hide heard himself say, as if it wasn’t really him speaking, and someone else was merely borrowing his body to get him through these next few steps.  Bending down to pick up his quinque case, Hide staggered out, and barely made it to the locker room.  Letting the case fall, Hide then ducked into a bathroom stall and closed it.

Closing his eyes, Hide peeled his jacket, tie, and shirt off.  Gasping for some more air, Hide then peeled his binder off and sat down, leaning against the door of the stall.  God…  He didn’t want to look at the mess he knew his torso would be.  Didn’t want to, didn’t feel like he should have to, but--

But Hide swallowed and looked down and began crying.  The dark purple bruises that were already nice and forming, with the way part of his torso looked like it was trying to bend inwards on itself, and that wasn’t including the raw parts where Hide had been twisting around, how he was bleeding under it.  It hurt to cry, it hurt to breathe.  Everything hurt, and Hide wanted nothing more than to stop needing to breathe, so the pain would go away.

Life didn’t work like that.  Feeling the need to begin vomiting, Hide leaned over the toilet and began doing so, feeling his rib begin the healing process.  Some part of Hide told him that it was, logically, because of his increased RC cells from eating his own fingers, but Hide didn’t want to think about that.  So instead, he looked in horror at the phlegm and blood in the toilet from what he had coughed up.

Swearing softly, Hide just slowly curled up, once more, feeling his entire body protest what Hide was making it do, and placed his head on the side of the toilet, crying without trying to gasp for air.

It took a half an hour for the majority of the pain to end.  However, Hide still felt like he was run through the ringer, and Hide had been debating on it.

After all, only eating a finger couldn’t possibly hurt that much.  Hide had let Kaneki eat him, after all, and Hide knew…  Hide knew very well how delicious he was.  (He was more afraid that once he started, he wouldn’t be able to stop.)

So Hide slowly put one in his mouth and closed down.  It didn’t happen, though; Hide found his body refusing to bite off his own finger--as if it was yelling at him, hey, asshole, that’s your goddamn finger!  Don’t bite that.

But really, it had only felt like the amount of pressure one put behind eating a raw carrot.  So Hide pulled the finger out, exhaled, and put it back in, not yet ready to place on his tongue, and bit down.

It hurt.  But Hide was expecting that, and frankly, he wanted his chest to heal more than he wanted the finger at that exact moment in time.  The finger could grow back.  Hide knew it could.  So Hide bit and chewed at the finger until it came off, his groans of pain trying to stay quiet, for fear someone would come in.  The (delicious) taste of his own flesh was in his mouth, and Hide groaned softly, putting his hand into his mouth until it stopped bleeding, until his own flesh finally stopped aching in rebellion of his stupid choices.

Once he finally felt his body leave the agonizing state it had been in, Hide took his hand out of his mouth, watching his finger begin to scab and begin its regrowth for a moment, before he forced his body to stand.  Ignoring the creaking protest of healed bones that had settled in the curled up, desperate and tired huddled mass Hide had made of himself, Hide aggressively pulled his binder back on, shaking his head unhappily.

It hurt, already protesting the binder and the suit being put back on.  But Hide had to keep it on, until he made it back to the apartment he no longer felt safe in calling home.  Hide found himself going through anxious rituals he thought he had managed to curb, locking his door once, and then four more times, and then four more times.  Hide’s body protested every inch he made on this intense voyage, and for the first time in a very long time, Hide let himself cave to the pain, and he peeled off the binder and pointedly doesn’t look in the mirror as he crashed into his bed, letting himself make his way to unconsciousness.

“Make a left here,”  the order came clear as Hide and Houji ran down a side road that filtered out onto a main road,  “we can cut them off when they cut out in the next alley.  You said you can smell the ghoul, right?”

“Yes sir,”  Hide said, inhaling for a moment as he tried to pick up the scent he had barely managed to grasp to start with,  “but if they get out to a crowd, I risk losing them; I can’t tell individual smells apart yet.”

“Can you find which way they’d go if we were close behind?”  Houji asked as he gestured for Hide to take the lead.

After a beat of Hide trying to think of if he could, Hide nodded,  “If we stay close.”  He took the left then, looking for the ghoul.  Taking the chance, seeing and smelling it coming out of the alley, he swallowed, activating his quinque and drawing it.

“Stop, CCG!”  His voice was loud, clear, and Hide was sure it didn’t convey the fear that he felt--the fear that this was a former Anteiku ghoul, and he was going to have to kill someone Kaneki had cared immensely about in some way, in order to now maintain Kaneki’s safety.

Behind him, Hide heard Houji activate Hollow, and Hide took off after the ghoul.  Now that Hide had a better look, he realised that the ghoul must have been only fourteen or fifteen. The ghoul looked male, messy brown hair, big, afraid eyes.  It was a kid.  It was a kid, and here Hide was, preparing to murder a child.

Because if Hide didn’t kill this child, his own life, and Haise’s were on the line, and to Hide, that was not an acceptable gamble he was willing to make.

Before Hide could go and put himself on the offense, the kid activated their kagune--a big koukaku, looking more like a spade that extended down like a shield.

Right--this called for a red and a double green.  The two-handed attacks were better for armor, he reminded himself, running to charge in.  Already, his lungs moved in protest as Screeching Ghost swung in, Hide calling out,  “Red!”

So maybe calling his shots wasn’t the best idea.  But right now, he was more interested in making sure he was doing them right, rather than making sure this terrified child wasn’t picking up on the pattern.

So as Screeching Ghost slashed in, Hide planted his feet properly, making one, then two slashes across the kagune.  He felt the kagune crack, and Hide stiffly moved to try and adjust for a stab.

At seeing Hide crack the kagune, the kid backed up in fear, screaming in a loud, high-pitched way, using the broken kagune to slam Hide up and into the air.

It was only supposed to be one ghoul that Hide and Houji were chasing.  But when the second one came in from Hide’s blind side, due to that eyepatch--bikaku or rinkaku, Hide couldn’t tell--and slammed one of the angry scorpion-like tentacles into Hide’s torso, Hide panicked.

Hide pushed his eyepatch out of the way, feeling his own kagune emerge then.  Blinking to clean up the sudden shift from dark to light on his other side, Hide’s eye pricked as the kakugan flickered on.  Hide’s kagune came down as one large, thick tendril, hitting the ground just barely before Hide did, and Hide used the force of the ricochet to land him on his feet, spinning to face both the ghouls.

“What the--”  The elder ghoul demanded, stepping back in clearly nervous fear,  “the CCG has a one-eye?!  That’s not Eyepatch.”

Hide swallowed, before he gripped Screeching Ghost once more.  Running forward, Hide pushed his body up and forward, making a two-handed stab (double green, he reminded himself) through the rinkaku, impaling it for a moment.  Hide maneuvered his kagune between his own legs, using it to push himself back, like he was jumping back from a trampoline, using a slice to the right to tear the ghoul open, pulling away entirely as he bounced back to Houji, who promptly used Hollow to shoot at the koukaku.

“No,”  Hide hissed to the rinkaku, doing his best to tune out the screaming of the child, and the way the smell of burnt flesh and blood hit his nose,  “I’m not.”

“Rank three,”  Houji said calmly,  “finish the koukaku.  I’ll have a discussion with our friend here.”

Hide blinked, but nodded.  Right.  He…  Kill the kid.  Don’t let the kid heal and get away.  That’ll just bring about needless death…  Hide knew how the cycle of revenge worked.  He had heard how it consumed people…

“Please…”  The child looked up pleadingly as Hide approached, and they began to try and move backwards, as if somehow, begging with this investigator--this One-Eyed monstrosity--would somehow preserve their life.

The ghoul wasn’t healing.  Hide took note of it in a detached manner, as if one would say that there wasn’t any soda in a drink fountain.  The ghoul must have been too weak to heal from the now detonated barbs that Hollow had lodged into them after Hide had primarily destroyed the kagune.

“It’s easier to kill when you’re dead yourself,”  Hide whispered softly, looking away as he thrust the blade of the quinque into the child’s head, rendering anything else it would have said now gone,  “I mean…  It’s not a big deal anymore.  You’re not as prejudiced as you were.”

Hide closed his eyes for a moment, pushing the bile back down into his throat at best as he could with a deep breath and the shake of his own head, before he began to approach Houji, looking at the still alive ghoul.

As if anticipating Hide’s question from Hide’s slowly raising eyebrows, Houji said to Hide,  “Our good friend Scorpion has some rather interesting information that he’s been so kind to share with us.”

“Ah?”  Hide asked looking at the ghoul.  Hide had, in all honesty, thought that this ward was closed out…  Or would be close to it.

“It seems a gang of ghouls lead by a ghoul who calls herself Three Blades has decided to make this ward their new home.”  Houji replied coldly, keeping his quinque trained on the ghoul on the ground in front of them both.

Hide nodded slowly, looking down at the ghoul.  “What do we do about it, then?”  He asked, unsure if his own question referred to the ghoul at the end of Hollow, or with the knowledge in front of them.

“We keep the ward closed,”  Houji said coldly.

“He--hey, you said I could take Resak and leave!”  Scorpion said from below them both.

Resak.  Hide knew that name--not the ghoul in specific, but  _ oh _ , Hide didn’t want to hear a name that belonged to a second cousin of his own--on his mother’s side, because there were no  _ Utari _ Washuus, sans Hide himself.

“You didn’t  _ ask _ ,”  Hide snapped then an uncharacteristic rage gripping him for a  long moment.  Gripping the quinque in his hands, Hide spun to glare,  “and I’m sure that Resak knew.  We cannot  _ take _ merely because we need it--we have  _ always  _ had to ask.”  He should be silent.  He knew better--he’d listened to stories at his mother and grandmother’s feet many times before, but in that moment, Hide didn’t  _ want  _ to know better.

So Hide didn’t know any better, and the kagune he had nearly forgotten was out proceeded to wrap around Scorpion’s head, and snapped quickly both ways, and somehow--somehow that wasn’t enough.  So Hide’s kagune then merely tore the head off as well, and Hide flung it to the side, shaking in anger, before his kagune dissipated, and his kakugan disappeared.

Oh, how proud his mother would be.  How proud Kaneki would be.

There was no conversation as Hide and Houji called for the scene to be cleaned, and there was no conversation until they had left the scene entirely.

“You spoke of the ghoul as if you knew it,”  Houji remarked.

Hide blinked, before he shook his head, biting his lip.  “No, not personally.  It had the name of a second cousin of mine--my mother’s cousin, actually.  It’s…  It’s one of the names of my people.”  A beat, and upon realising that Houji had no clue what Hide said, Hide began to elaborate, closing his eyes and sighing.

“...I’m  _ Ainu. _  Well, in part, on my mother’s side.”  His lips twitched awkwardly,  “I don’t like people calling me that word, though, not with the history behind it, and not if they’re  _ wajin _ , not by any means.  The cultural heritage I have is one of the only things I have that connects me to the other half of my family.  I wasn’t close to most of them until I was a teenager and…”

He trailed off for a moment, before he continued on, turning at the light,  “It just  _ hurt _ to see someone in my culture like that, I guess.  Especially since one of the largest things our religions contain is that we cannot take without first asking.  Ghouls don’t  _ ask _ if they can consume human flesh, and they don’t  _ thank _ the person they ate, or respect the dead.  They just do.”

Hide clenched his fists once more,  “They don’t.  They never have.  And I understand--ghouls didn’t ask to be born monsters.  But there’s solutions to killing people who have done nothing wrong.”

“You’ve thought about it,”  Houji remarked as they walked back into the office.

Hide nodded after a moment, sighing, “I mean--there are suicide victims.  People who’ve died from sickness, or injury, or unneeded organs from surgeries…  There are ways to live without having to torment and kill people--hell, I’m sure there’s a way to replicate RC cells like humans have for ghouls to eat.”

“You must think I’m naive,”  Hide said after a moment, looking at Houji.  He was half expecting to be laughed at, or told that Hide had no heart for this.

“I think you’re idealistic,”  Houji replied,  “but I think you already understand why we’re required.  Because as you’ve said--ghouls just take.  For every ghoul who lives by the standards you’ve said--for I’m sure there are ghouls like that--there is a member of Aogiri.  And I know that you want to see Aogiri removed.”

Hide nodded reluctantly, looking at the handle of his quinque’s case.

“Yeah.  I do.”

“Now, we’re going to get to work on tracking down the members of the Triple Blades Gang,”  Houji said, clapping Hide on the back,  “let’s begin by examining the local area.  Do you think we’d be able to pass you off as a ghoul long enough for you to find them?”

Hide promptly snorted.  “What?  Do you think we’re going to find a ghoul in a salad bar?”  
  


Hide had found a ghoul in a salad bar.

How?  Well, that was a mix of determination and a few other things, but mostly made of luck.  Ghouls, it seemed, like to hide in plain sight.  Not that Hide could blame them; unless he knew of ghouls living in a salad bar, he wouldn’t have gone looking in a salad bar for said ghouls.

But he could smell the girl behind the counter.  That was another ghoul smell; more akin to his own smell than Houji’s own.  And as Hide looked over at her for another moment, before back to the salad he was weakly shoving into his mouth.  God…  Maybe it had been a bad idea to go investigating without his mentor.  But he had done this before…  Hide had to remember that--he had tracked Yamori down.  He could find a low-level ghoul.

She was short.  Hide couldn’t tell her age, but she was short, and had a large topknot of hair.  Watching for a few more moments, before someone else walked in, and began to talk to her.

Hide closed his eyes, trying to make out what they were saying.  Doves (birds?  What?) in the area, possibly Eyepatch with the CCG…  What should they do?

Repressing the urge to snort, because well, they must have missed the the very clear part where no, he was not Eyepatch…  Hide wasn’t Kaneki at all.  They were very, very different people.  Though at that moment, he slowly stood up, beginning to head over to over to both of the ghouls.  Right.  He could do this.  This was the easy part.

“That’s him!”  Hide heard as he made his way across, ducking past a person, only to get pushed against the salad bar.  

Grumbling as he watched the two ghouls run out the door, Hide began to try and run through it, yelling,  “CCG, stop!”

Not that it did stop the ghouls, as he ran out the back door, looking around.  Trying to take a smell for them both, he closed his eyes, trying to use his other, more ghoul-like senses to get to moving to try and find the ghouls.  Right, right…  Where was that smell--

Hide let out a yelp of pain as he was slammed into yet again with a kagune.  Face meeting concrete, Hide tried to look behind him as he was pushed down and then back, his quinque case being knocked out of his hands and moving away from him.

This ghoul had an unusual mask--a tri-pointed faceless mask with what could have been openings like the end of a metal bell around it.  It must have been the same girl, though; he could tell from the hair behind her mask, and the height.

Hide swallowed, looking at the rather impressive three-bladed kagune behind her.  She had to be either a bikaku or a rinkaku, but Hide wasn’t skilled enough to tell the difference--not yet, at any rate.  Was this the leader of the Three Blades, then?  It would serve to be right, with her three blades.  Hide looked between the ghoul and his quinque case, before he took off to try and run for it. Pushing himself up, he barely made a few steps, before she laughed and let one of her blades move, slicing Hide solidly across the stomach.

Hide grunted, feeling his kakugan prickle on once more as his body began to try and heal.  No…  He couldn’t die!  Not here.  He had promised to protect Kaneki--to protect Haise.  He’d be willing to die in the place of someone he loved, but dying in the place of someone he loved didn’t mean dying in the back end of a half-star salad bar because he needed to chase down the members of some ghoul gang that was  _ not _ the Aogiri Tree.

Hide felt his kagune come back out, and he pushed his eyepatch out of the way for a better view of the ghoul, glaring all the while at her.

“You’re going to regret that, Three Blades.”

“Doubt that,”  she laughed, stepping forward,  “You sure don’t look like Eyepatch.  You know, your skin’s too dark--which is kind of gross, actually.  Your hair’s too yellow.  So this leaves me to wonder: is the CCG making their own one-eyes, too?  That’s something interesting to think about.  So why don’t you tell me, One-Eye?”  And of course, she had to say  _ One-Eye-chan _ , just to be perfectly condescending, and Hide snarled softly at the choice of honourific.  “Is the CCG gonna use you to fight us?”

“Die in a hole,”  Hide replied, moving his kagune so it was in front of him protectively.  It was more like its original tail-like form, but it felt so draining to use, and Hide had no ideas as to why.  “You’ll never get any answers out of me.”

For a moment, he could swear the ghoul was grinning, even if he knew he couldn’t see behind her mask.  “Oh, don’t worry,”  she borderline cooed,  “I’m sure the Tree would be quite interested in  _ you _ .”

Hide tried to charge forward to get in range, his body protesting every step of the way.  He went in to throw a punch, his entire body going into the swing that started in his hips, before he tried to move to slam her with his kagune in return, but Three Blades laughed and moved out of his way easily, responding with a slam of her own kagune, sending Hide into the wall of a building, faster than a speeding bullet.

Hide groaned in pain, before he tried to push himself up.  Barely making it onto his hands and knees, Hide looked up at Three Blades with vision that was now beginning to blur.  “They can have me over their dead bodies,”  he snapped, beginning to push himself up to stand.  Hide’s body screamed in pain, protesting every movement he made, and for every bit of progress he had made on the standing front, she only smacked into him once more, much like a cat knocking down a prey animal to play with it.

Hide grunted in pain once more, making his way back down to the ground, his head banging into something again.

“They won’t be taking you at all.”

Hide never thought he’d be thankful to hear Houji’s voice, even though he knew logically, it was only Hide desperately hoping for someone to save him.  That same logical part of Hide that ran commentary in the background was trying to figure how Houji had found him, but it was quickly drowned out by the relief of seeing his mentor, and Hide shook his head slowly, getting out,  “Associate Special Class--?”

Around then, the sounds people were making stopped working for Hide, and he watched there be some flow of conversation, and then ghoul begin to run off, and Houji moved over to Hide, and Houji was saying something, but Hide couldn’t make it out, and as Houji moved to try and help Hide stand, Hide promptly felt his entire world fade around him, and Hide fell into blissful nothingness, enjoying this feeling of no pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Gilligan Cut is a classic staple of comedy in which someone announces something forcefully and the scene immediately cuts to the same character doing something in direct contradiction to what they just said. [source: TVTropes]


	5. Act 1, Scene 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I say it won't take long, but here it is, taking long. Sorry all; real life and mental illness got in the way. However, here's the last scene for act one! :)
> 
> Alternatively, The End of the Beginning

“I’m sorry, Director, however, Naoyoshi has displayed that she cannot meet the standards the Sunlit Garden requires.  While she meets alongside her other peers in all the required fields, all evidence points to Naoyoshi being subpar in combat training to our standards.  She’s only as capable in battle as children who would be attending the academy.”

Oh, not this memory, Hide found himself thinking.  How he  _ loathed _ this one in particular.  But parts of his body once more didn’t want to move, and for a few moments, Hide felt like he was eight again, brown eyes staring up through messy brown hair at the instructor discussing with his father  _ why _ he was being forced to leave his class.

“Unfortunately, we’ve strung it out for as long as we can.  There are already students that are surpassing her, and it will lead to dangerous consequences.  There are other schools that would be willing to take her.”

His eyes closed, and Hide felt his body fall back into the eight year old shell of himself, his hands behind himself as he looked up at his least favourite instructor.  Combat was  _ painful _ and it ripped at his flesh, and Hide couldn’t keep up.  He knew he couldn’t keep up.

At eight years old, his eyes narrowed and Hide looked up, the only time he ever truly thought to look up, and heard himself asking, without really seeming to understand what was being discussed,  “Do all children leave the Garden eventually, or just me?”

“Naoyoshi, now is not the time,”  Yoshitoki held up his hand to silence Hide.

Hide knew how, in his memories, how this played out.  He couldn’t make his mouth spew out the words he wanted to say: ‘Good.  I want to leave this hellish place.  I’m a child; why am I being forced to kill?  I’ve seen what you’ve made other children here.  Let me leave.’

Instead, he’s forced to choke out words he’s remembered a million times before, rotting in the back of his skull.

“So it’s true that I am not good enough for you, father?”

Thankfully, before he was forced to remember Yoshitoki’s response, or the looks on either of the men’s faces in that room, Hide managed to open his eyes.  Gasping for air for a moment, he groaned, his eyes encouraging a dull, throbbing sensation in the back from the sudden brightness of the room.

He was beginning to make a habit of waking up in hospitals with no memory as to why, wasn’t he?  It wasn’t a habit he should really continue with doing, for his own good.  Besides, it wasn’t like his body wouldn’t heal from the things he put himself through--

“Don’t try to sit up yet,”  Houji’s voice was stern.  Hide blinked, trying to readjust to look at his mentor properly, and just merely ended up grinning after a moment, once it seemed to set in.

“Ah--’m sorry.  I thought I had her--”

“You’re an idiot,”  Houji cut Hide off,  “and a reckless one, at that, who can’t listen to simple directions, such as ‘stay here’ and ‘don’t run off on your own’.  You’re endangering your own life because of a reason I don’t fully understand.  And I am so glad you’re alive.  Do you understand how _ stupid _ of you that was?”

“Yes sir,”  Hide said after a moment, groaning softly as he rubbed at his eyes wearily.  “I won’t do it again.  Or well--actually, I’m not going to lie to your face.  I’ll try to not do it intentionally.”

And then, a beat, and Hide inquired,  “Have I been unconscious for very long?  All sarcasm aside, I would hate to have backed up the investigation by much.”

Houji shook his head after a moment, sighing,  “Three Blades escaped.  Myself and a few other investigators managed to find where you were going, and she wisely decided that rather than fight all of us, she’d retreat for now.

“That, of course,”  sighed Houji,  “means we’re going to need to find her.  But not until you’re completely well.  From what I’ve heard from Doctor Shiba as he was taking your vitals, your RC levels are low.  I didn’t get all the details, nor did I think he’d give them, but he  _ is _ coming once you’ve woken up.  So you best prepare yourself for his interrogations.”

Hide felt like crying on the inside.  He didn’t want to be reminded of the small ache in his lower back where his kakuhou rested, but he nodded, wincing a bit as the twinge of pain from the kakugan, as if being reminded it existed, flickered on in his right eye.

“Sounds more like my blood sugar crashed,”  Hide only half joked, nodding unhappily.  He rubbed at the eye once more, half-hoping it would go down on its own, before he murmured,  “Thank you, sir.  I’m sure that Doctor Shiba’ll have my head on some nice platter.”

“Not hardly, Washuu,”  and with that, the doctor had walked in, and Houji stepped back, mouthing an apology as he left,  “though I would like to inform you that after your most recent stunt, Rank Three, it's a wonder you woke up as early as you did.  The pain alone should have kept you down for another day or two.”

“I have an extraordinary pain tolerance,”  Hide replied uncomfortably as a blood pressure cuff was attached to him, and it tightened around his arm,  “and I did plenty of stupid things on the path to what led me here.  I'm slightly used to ghouls throwing me around like I'm a meatsack.”

He forced the humor in, wincing a bit when the cuff was taken off and Shiba began to write notes down.

“I see,”  Shiba began,  “however, your RC levels are rather low.  We won't compare you to Sasaki, since you two aren't even close, but even in comparison to a normal ghoul, it's low.”

“Well, I'm part human,”  Hide replied and winced unhappily,  “so that should, logically, have something to do with that.”  Internally, however, he wanted to pry about Haise’s information.  Wanted answers.  But Hide didn't dare pick at it; there was too much at stake.

“Fair enough,”  Shiba replied,  “but you still need to have higher levels that what you do, what with the way your body has been trying to heal constant damage and summon its kagune.”

Hide bit back another sarcastic remark, choosing instead to ask as flatly as he could manage,  “How dangerous would it be to increase my levels like that?  After all, the point is to keep me mostly human.  If I end up too much like a ghoul, I may as well do us all the favor and impale myself on my own quinque.”

“You do yourself no favors by cheapening the value of your life,”  Shiba replied and made a clicking sound with his teeth that internally rattled around inside Hide’s head,  “but for the moment, we have what you could consider to be a supplementary material, not quite unlike a protein shake, for your RC cells.”

“Back up,”  Hide frowned, doing his best to push himself up then.  His vision swam for a moment, and his body protested moving in thirty thousand ways,  “let me get this straight--you basically blended human flesh into a smoothie for me to drink?”

“More as if we extracted the required combination of flesh and blood you would need to help provide you a better base.  The average human is between 200 and 500.  You're barely scraping by at 800 at the moment--and that's at your lowest after you collapsed in combat.”

Hide frowned once more, looking at his hands unhappily, before he clenched his fists.  “So do we  _ want _ me to get to ghoul levels here?  That doesn't sound very much like a plan to me.”

“For the moment, getting you to a relatively stable point is where we want to be,”  Shiba replied,  “Think of it as a human smoothie if that's what you want.  You're still having an easier time than your predecessor did, from what all reports are telling me.”

Hide glared up for a moment, before he just nodded curtly.  “Fine then.  I'll chug the remains of whomever was unfortunate enough to end up in the blender you keep in the break room.”  The blunt bringing up of Haise (and Hide’s failure to protect Kaneki from the unseen dangers of the world) stung, and Hide didn't want it to seem that obvious that it did indeed hurt that much.

Nobody was ever allowed to see him flinch.

A foam cup with a lid and a straw ended up in Hide’s hands after a few moments, and Hide slowly took a few sips.

He shouldn't like the taste so much, the way the flesh of human spread across his tongue.  Maybe some (ghoulish) inner part of him delighted too much in it, and Hide’s no longer entirely human taste buds read the remains of the flesh as something other than what it was.  In all honesty, it tasted more like a vanilla milkshake that was a bit too warm, and Hide became aware of how greedily he was sucking at the straw.

_ Disgusting, _ thought Hide,  _ I'm so disgusting, liking this sort of thing.  I was raised better than this. _

“Ideally,”  Shiba said as Hide tuned back in, relishing in the taste of his human smoothie still, “it will help you balance your RC cell levels until your body becomes accustomed to reaching those levels on its own.  After all, the weakest ghoul on record was about a hundred points higher than you, though they average around a thousand at a minimum.”

Hide nodded, blinking slowly.  He had never finished any time at a CCG Academy, and now it felt like he was going to need to be playing catch up.  (The place Hide had begun wasn't big on formal education, and Hide hadn't been in an academy long enough after that for any of it to sink in, before he had left, gripping his mother’s hand and never returning.)  After all, this  _ sounded _ like a rather basic concept, and Hide had the roughest idea of what was being said.

“Got it,”  Hide rasped out and looked back at the cup in his hands,  “...Doctor, what am I supposed to be, exactly?”

“Hm…  The idea is more of a human with a quinque inside them.  Ideally, if we keep you around 900, you’ll still be able to be eat food, although that may be limited somewhat--more than likely, you'll find cravings for what your more ghoulish side wants.  However, these are all theories; nobody knows for sure unless you tell us what exactly you're feeling, Hideyoshi.”

Well, that was a rather mild way to say Hide would want to eat humans eventually.  And he supposed when that day came, the CCG would put him out of his misery, too.

_ So he’s a ghoul? _

_ I don't need to eat humans! _

Hide shook his head aggressively, saying in a flat voice,  “Other than a newfound appreciation for rare meat, I have no noticed dietary changes.”

There was a beat of sheer awkwardness, before Hide added on,  “That was a  _ joke, _ Doctor.  I don't like rare meat.  I'm more of a fish person anyways.”

“I see,”  Shiba said after another uncomfortable pause,  “we’ll need to keep you for another day or two of observation--”

“Is there any way I can get back into the field, doc?”  Hide cut across, biting his lip for a long moment,  “There’s already been too much time lost on the case I was assigned to.  Other than just aches and pains that’ll eventually fade, I'm fine.  My body’s already healed.”

“You just woke up,”  Shiba replied, a frown in his voice,  “I’m not about to let you leave without at least a day of observation.  Continuously forcing your body through situations where your body won’t move because of a lack of your RC cells will only cause severe harm to yourself.”

Hide clenched his fists then, nodding with an unhappy sigh.  “Then can I leave  _ tomorrow _ , with the clean bill of health?”

“We’ll see.”

* * *

It took three days for Hide to leave.

After the first day, Hide had decided that if the hospital staff wasn’t going to  _ let _ him leave, he would leave on his own--and had done his best to climb out the window.    However, that had been the easiest slip to make, due to Hide’s own light-headedness from not being able to move, and he had fallen.

And it had taken a moment for him to form a kagune to try and grasp onto the window from his room at the hospital, and he had felt it tug painfully, as if the kakuhou was being yanked on, and it was a kind of pain Hide had never experienced before.  As such, his kagune unfurled itself, dissipating just as quickly, and Hide could only scream as he fell, his body slamming down three stories onto concrete.

Hide was now rearranging his pain scale.  Slamming three floors down onto concrete and feeling your body try to heal itself was  _ officially  _ worse than your best friend eating you alive.  So much worse, in fact, that Hide would have willingly sacrificed his own flesh for Kaneki again than ever fall from something.

The second day, Hide’s father had come to, a glimmer in his eye of sheer amusement.

“I heard you took quite a fall yesterday.”

“Shut up,”  Hide groaned as he sucked on another one of his new beverage friends,  “Shiba wouldn’t let me leave.  Associate Special Class Houji and I are working on a case, and I didn’t want to be the reason it was lagging behind.  And now it turns out that I am.”

“I’m still amazed you thought you could climb out a window in nothing but your hospital gown,”  Yoshitoki laughed at his son,  “have you gotten your kakugan under control?  You’re not wearing the eyepatch.”

“I had a vision test earlier,”  Hide groused,  “shockingly, wearing an eyepatch all the time does horrible things for your depth perception.  I was told it’ll fix itself, though.  But hey!  I should be able to get out of here soon, and back to the life you always wanted for me.”

“Hideyoshi,”  Yoshitoki sighed then, shaking his head wearily,  “not like this.  Never like this.  You know that.”

Hide clenched his fists slightly, before continuing on,  “But you  _ did _ want me to be an investigator.  To continue on this bloodline.”

Yoshitoki didn't respond, and Hide grabbed for a cup of water.

“Figures.”

* * *

But finally, freedom came for Hide, and he had clambered out of his hospital bed as eagerly as possible, returning to the somewhat now-comforting feeling of suits and quinque in hand.  He wasn’t sure why it was liberating, but he supposed it came down to the fact that Hide was no longer confined to a bed, forced to do what Doctor Shiba wanted him to do.

“I apologise for the delay,”  Hide bowed appropriately to Houji when he had returned to the Twentieth Ward’s branch office,  “There were unexpected complications at the hospital.  I am well now, and have been cleared for a return to duty.”

“That’s more formal than I’ve become used to you using with me,”  Houji replied with a mildly amused expression,  “but we’ve work to begin.  We’ve permission to go through the records of the location where you found Three Blades, and from there, we’re going to begin stretching our search out.”

Hide nodded, biting his lip,  “Is it possible that she’s returned to the prior location?”

“Doubtful,”  Houji began,  “Ghouls tend to not linger when their identity has been exposed.  Fear that people who knew them are no longer friendly towards them will lead them to run.  In areas where there are more ghouls, they tend to find shelter amongst their own kind.  However, since the Twentieth is closed out, except for Three Blades and her gang, they’re hiding somewhere.”

“Got it,”  murmured Hide, biting his lip,  “Is it possible that Three Blades is looking for a bigger group to join forces with?”

“That’s always possible,”  agreed Houji,  “but before we go into hypotheticals, we need to find the beginning of the trail.  So we start at the last known sighting, and work our way around that.  Ghouls need to feed; there’s bound to be a trail of bloody corpses leading us to them.  Figuratively, if not literally.”

“So how do we find the trail of corpses?  Are we just gonna go to some morgues and ask them about their--”  Hide cut off, watching Houji slowly nod.  Groaning after a moment, Hide pinched the bridge of his nose.  “Figures that’s what we’re going to do.  Absolutely figures.”

“You sound like digging around in morgues and inquiring about dead bodies isn’t your idea of a fun Saturday.”

“I’d rather deal with my brother,”  Hide replied sourly as they walked out the front door, Hide tailing along Houji with a sigh,  “at some big Washuu family dinner.  Big traditional thing, with like, all my three thousand cousins.  I’ll be the darkest one there, and I’ll call everybody out until we’re all loud and fighting.  The worst thing ever.  And I’d  _ still _ rather do that over dig through a morgue.”

Houji let out what could have been an arguable chuckle, his eyes glittering for a moment,  “I'll keep that in mind, Washuu.  You'd rather deal with something you consider torture over something reasonable.”

“Reasonable?!  We’re looking at bodies!”  Hide squawked out.

“We're gaining information on them,”  Houji enlightened Hide,  “where they died, their family, and then we ask the family about friends, places they went--we look for things out of the ordinary, like any subset of police does in a murder investigation.”

Hide blinked, nodding after a moment,  “Got it.”

“This is also a practical way for you to see what different kinds of markings from kagunes look like on various bodies,”  Houji explained,  “I'm sure you've very rarely seen them, if at all.”

Hide promptly puffed his face out,  “Hey!  I kinda know what a bikaku looks like!”

“I'm sure.”

Tongue flicking out in response, Hide crossed his arms,  “I do.  Kinda.  So which morgues are we hitting first?”

“These ones,”  Houji replied, sliding a list over,  “most of them work alongside the CCG already and their forensic scientists and coroners notify us when bodies from ghoul attacks come in.  We know we’re looking for bikaku attacks, and relatively recent ones. Gives us a window, albeit small, to begin working in.”

Hide nodded after a moment, sighing softly,  “Got it.”

“Ideally,”  Houji drawled out, the smallest glimmer of humour in his voice,  “a visit to the morgue won’t land you in the hospital again, Washuu.”

An ungraceful snort escaped Hide, and he smiled unwillingly, trying to suppress the laughter that threatened to escape.  “Alright.  Fair enough.  Then I suppose we ought to get going, right?  Lead the way.”

“These are the only ghoul-related victims that have come to us in the last few months,”  the forensic scientist, a woman by the name of Sato Nori, said, leading Hide and Houji along to the inside of the building,  “the CCG hadn’t progressed far along on these cases, and so they’ve remained here.  The bodies are sorted by location found.  This room up ahead is the Twentieth Ward’s.  We’re not a facility that carries bodies left from the raid, though, so if you're looking for anything that far back, you're out of luck.”

“Thank you, Doctor Sato,”  Houji nodded,  “my partner and I will begin here.  We’ll call for you if we need your assistance further.”

Sato nodded and backed up, taking her steps out the door, leaving Hide and Houji alone in the room.

“Let’s get to work,”  Houji ordered,  “the computer there has records.  Start by looking for bodies that came close to the salad bar, and pull the information; anything that ties the victims together is useful--names, age group, gender, race, any defining features, what the cause of death was.”

Hide nodded and sat down, somewhat uncomfortable about this situation.  Typing and beginning to manually click through the database, Hide found himself ready to groan at how annoying it was to navigate--it wasn't hard, and not quite unlike sifting through college databases, but it was annoying enough to be like switching from one type of computer to another; the shortcuts Hide had long accustomed himself to were not the same as the ones he was now having to use.

“We’ve two employees from the salad bar,”  Hide began,  “and then a few others who fit the pattern--young men, never wajin--so yeah, nice to know this ghoul’s a racist.  I’m laughing my ass off.”  Hide bit his lip, before he continued on, keeping the sarcasm out of his voice,  “Generally it’s in groups of twos or threes; she’s not feeding just herself, if the timestamps on the deaths are anything to go by.”

“Well, she didn’t take them back,”  Houji said,  “else they wouldn’t be here.  So print out the names and pictures of them, and we’ll get to work from there.”

* * *

“Excuse me, ma’am,”  Hide began as the door opened up,  “I’m Rank Three Washuu Hideyoshi from the Commission of Counter-Ghoul.  I’m here to talk to you about your son,  Wáng T āo ?”

The woman who answered the door had the markings of a mother, Hide thought--a worn face, far too used to telling a child no, darling, we cannot do this today.  I love you, but come, it’s safer from the world inside, out of the way, where nobody can harm you.

Hide wished he did not have to give this woman the news he was about to let pass from his lips.

“Where is he?”  The words came out, so angry and bitter, as if this woman was built with an anger that was merely being directed to the wrong person,  “I knew he shouldn’t have taken that job!  It was near that cafe where those ghouls worked, but he kept telling me that no, nothing would go wrong--”

“He’s dead,”  Hide said, cutting her words off,  “I’m sorry for your loss.  We’ve…  been informed he’s been deceased for roughly two weeks now, and it took some work in finding out where you were.”

And with that, the anger and frustration sapped out of the woman, and she looked at Hide as if the world was suddenly a lost and empty place, as if Hide was lying to her--that no, her son would appear from behind him at any moment, and it would all be okay.

Hide remembered that feeling.  He remembered that feeling too well, and he gently reached over and squeezed her arm.  “We’re looking for his killer.  I promise.”

“He was such a good boy,”  her voice was distant, not all there, and Hide knew words upon words from psychological works he had forced his brain to go through for school, but he knew from experience much better--this was what mourning looked like.

“I'm sure he was,”  Hide agreed and nodded,  “Ms. Wáng, if there's anything you may have known about your son’s last few months alive, anything you can tell me at all, it'll bring my partner and I one step closer to finding, and killing, the ghoul who killed him.”

She watched Hide for a few moments, before she nodded.  “Come in,”  she sniffled,  “I can help you.  Tāo was such a good boy…  Always making sure I was taken care of, and that nobody would ever come looking this way…”

She gestured for Hide to sit down in front of an old tatami, and said,  “You must be thirsty, Mister Investigator.  How do you take your coffee?”

Hide blinked, before he decided to humour the grieving mother,  “I've started to like it black,”  Hide’s voice was slightly wary, before he pushed the negative thoughts to the side, choosing instead to study as much of the house as he could.

It was a small room he was in, and he could clearly see the kitchen from here.  There was a staircase that led up, presumably to a bathroom and bedrooms, and there was a closet in the kitchen--most likely a pantry of some sort or another.  A rather nondescript place altogether, but Hide wasn't one for judging people on their living conditions.

There was, however, a smell that bothered him.  A strong, sour,  _ putrid _ smell, that if a Hide didn't know any better, he would describe as rotting flesh.

Maybe it was just some bad meat in the fridge, he tried to tell himself as Ms. Wáng came back into the living room, setting the coffee down.  It was just a bad smell.  No reason to panic.  Not even as he looked up at her and politely took a sip of the coffee.

Were her teeth that colour before?  That was an oddly dark looking stain…  And she seemed awfully distressed, though that could be a stain from caffeine on her teeth, and anybody would be distressed at news of a dead son.

“How did he die?”  She asked calmly,  “You're from the CCG--that means a ghoul killed him, right?”

“Ah,”  Hide began, before he nodded,  “yes, ma’am.  The autopsy report says that he was…  He was decapitated.  He was dead before the ghoul ate him.”

Maybe he shouldn't have gone into that much detail.  She wasn't meeting his glances.  Maybe he shouldn't have--

“Who was it?”

Hide stopped his mental train of thought (the wonderful repetition he could hear of the world ‘snart’ screeching to a halt as well) to properly look at this woman.  She didn’t look upset by the death of a loved one--and Hide would know, being used to seeing it on people’s faces, and feeling it, deep down in his bones, that loss of someone ripped away from you, whom you would never be able to see again.  No…  The feeling around her was  _ murderous _ and that alone made him afraid.

“I…”  Hide began, taking another, anxious sip of his coffee.  The cup went on top of the kotatsu, and his hand slowly reached for the case of his quinque,  “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss that with you, ma’am.  It’s partially for your own safety; sometimes, in the case of extreme loss, it’s not uncommon for people to go searching--”

Hide’s words cut off as he was yanked up by the neck, his voice cut off (along with his breathing) by the woman’s snarl.

“It was that power-hungry Aogiri  _ bitch _ , wasn’t it?!”  She hollered,  “I told her to stay away from my boy!  And what good are any of you  _ investigators _ when you can’t protect the humans you’re supposed to be protecting?!”

Hide’s hands scrabbled for purchase, and he tried to peel her fingers away from his throat.

“Oh well,”  she laughed, digging her nails in harder,  “you look awfully delicious, little investigator, and you smell so delicious…  I’ve never smelt anything like you before...  I’m sure that you’ll taste perfectly fine inside of my belly.”

The pain of her teeth in his shoulder made Hide scream, and he feebly tried to kick out.  He felt the kagune emerge, and his kakugan activated angrily.

“What?!”  She grunted out, dropping Hide and backing up, her own kakugan activating as the multiple scaled tentacles of a rinkaku (like Kaneki--) revealed themselves.  Hide glared a bit, before he darted to the side and down, only barely hearing the whoosh of Hollow crashing through the side of the building.

The roar of the quinque’s energy blast caused Hide’s ears to ring, and it collided with the woman, sending her flying back into the living room.  And with that, as Hide stood, he grabbed his quinque case and activated it, his hand reaching in to pull out Screeching Ghost.

Swallowing, he walked over, pressing the tip of the blade to the ghoul’s throat.  “As per the Ghoul Countermeasure Laws,”  he began, gripping the shaft of the polearm anxiously,  “you are under arrest.  You can choose to resist, at which I'll make your life short, or you can come quietly, and you have a chance to live.”

A beat, and then Hide smiled sadly,  “Your son wouldn't want you to waste your life, Mrs. Wáng.”

She glared up at him for a long moment, before she conceded and said softly,  “I surrender.”

“You can come in now,”  Hide called out to Houji, relaxing a bit,  “she's surrendered.”

“It's hard to believe a ghoul would adopt a human,”  Houji said calmly, stepping inside the house with a frown,  “but this is evidence of it.”

“So,”  Houji said, crouching down to the woman,  “why don't you tell us what you know about Three Blades?”

* * *

 

They sped as fast as they could to where they had been told Three Blades had made her gang’s hideout.  Houji had been radioing for backup the entire time, and yet Hide found himself unable to feel much of anything, except a raw burning sense of  _ guilt _ and shame from what he did.

“We’re done here.”  Houji’s voice was cold, and he looked at the old woman in disgust, before he began to head towards the exit.  “Finish the job, Washuu.”

“Wait--finish the job?!”  Hide tore his gaze away to stare at his mentor in shock,  “Sir, she’s complied with everything we’ve asked of her!  There’s no reason to kill her!  Surely we can just lock her up--”

“I said  _ finish the job, Rank Three _ ,”  Houji said sternly, stopping and turning around to come back and begin walking towards Hide,  “this is our job--kill the ghoul, so we can move onto the next location.  She’ll only die in any prison meant for holding ghouls, when we’re done with her, so we may as well end it now.”

Hide looked down at the woman on the other end of his weapon, hands shaking,  “I…  I can’t do it, sir.  She…”

Houji made a disapproving groaning sound then, before he grabbed Hide’s hands, covering them completely, before he used Hide’s weapon to slam down, decapitating her head quickly, scooting it away from the rest of the body.

“And now you did.”

And now he had.  And Hide swallowed, looking at his hands in the car, while Houji drove in silence.  She had looked so…  So afraid.  So lost.  And then it was over, as quickly as that, and Hide felt disgusted with himself.  How could he?  How could he just stand by, and let someone else use him like that--to end another being’s life?  That was horrific and--

“Do you understand why you had to kill her?”  Houji asked, breaking the thick silence that had spread through the car as it turned down a road.

“Because she was a ghoul,”  Hide said, feeling his voice be further away from him than he’d like it to be,  “and our job is to kill ghouls.”

“Because  _ you _ are partially a ghoul,”  Houji corrected after a moment,  “and you cannot afford for any compassion for other ghouls, or else those who dislike this idea of your father’s will use this as foundation that you’re nothing more than a mindless ghoul.  You’re partial to living, aren’t you?”

Hide bit his lip, but nodded and looked down.  “Yes sir,”  he said, in a tone that said while  _ yes _ , he understood, he didn’t like it, not by any means.

“You don’t have to like it,”  Houji told Hide, who only sighed.  “But that’s the way the world is.  People will assume your compassion for ghouls is because you are a ghoul, and not because of another reason altogether, and it endangers you, and anything else you’ve had your hand in.  I’m not your father; I won’t lecture you on upholding your family name.  This is just a matter of trying to protect you.”

Hide nodded once more, before he wrung his hands together,  “We’re here, aren’t we?”  He asked, promptly changing the subject.

Houji nodded, pulling to the back of a warehouse and parking the car.  “We are.  Grab your quinque.  Backup should be here any moment, and then we’re running in.”

Hide discontentedly scrambled out of the car, pulling his quinque out with him, and activating it from the case quickly and easily.

“Quick question,”  Houji said calmly as he watched car pull up,  “What’s a red?”

A blink from Hide, and then:  “Two handed slash.”

“Green?”

“One handed stab.  Double green is two handed stab.”

“Blue?"

“One handed slash.”

“It’s good to see you can remember that,”  Houji lightly rapped Hide’s head, before he gestured the few bureau investigators over,  “We’ve information that Three Blades and her gang made refuge here.  Rank three Washuu and I will be heading in first.  We know the gang has herself and at least four other ghouls.  We’ll require cover fire.”

There was a long moment of silence as everybody prepared, and they looked around at one another, trying to not think of the possible inevitable--that they wouldn’t be coming back.  After all, Anteiku was still a fresh memory, from only earlier this year, and the very real concept that these ghouls may just as easily be strong was something to be terrified about.

“I’ll take the lead,”  Hide offered after a moment, looking from afraid face to afraid face, and knowing he had a similar expression,  “I’m more durable than the average human being.  As long as nobody decides they hate me after all and shoots me in the back, I’m more likely to survive a few blows while everybody gets prepared to fight the ghouls inside.”

Houji nodded after a moment,  “Washuu goes in first.  I’ll be right behind him, and then you all follow and make a firing line once we’re inside.  It should, ideally, be quick and clean for all of us.  If it turns to blows, focus on  _ killing _ them.  We mustn’t allow the ward to be opened back up.”

Hide and the other investigators nodded, before Hide took a few steps into the building.

The very first thing he did upon arriving was double over and vomit.

Piles upon piles of corpses strewn across the room of the area Hide was in, most mutilated in some horrific fashion--some with no heads, some with entangled and missing body parts, all partially eaten and thrown to the side in some way.

Unfortunately there seemed no escape to the carnage, and Hide looked down at his own feet, looking at someone’s head with another feeling that he would be sick to his own stomach.  He recognised the girl’s head; she had sat behind him in a university class that felt like forever and a day ago.  And really, that life  _ was _ nearly forever and a day ago…

Someone would have to take care of the bodies, he seemed to realise, in a detached, almost unreal way--not like an intrusive thought, where Hide could almost recognise that as not him, but just in a way that didn’t feel entirely real.  Someone would have to go through all these corpses, and find who they were, and deliver the news repeatedly.

I’m sorry, ma’am.  Your daughter was eaten by a ghoul.  I’m sorry, ma’am.  Your son was eaten by a ghoul.  I’m sorry, sir.  Your child was eaten by a ghoul.  I’m sorry.  They were eaten by a ghoul.  I’m sorry that they were eaten by a ghoul.  I’m sorry your son was eaten by a ghoul.  I’m sorry that ghouls exist and they ate your children up in the dead of night.

Where was Three Blades?  Hide took a few steps away, shakily wiping at his mouth, before he began to try and use his other senses.  

So what could he smell?  Vomit (caused by him), blood (from corpses), rot (from corpses), human flesh (not delicious)--ah, yes.  The lingering scent of ghoul.  And between that and the rattling Hide heard…  Well, that had to be one of said ghouls.

So Hide made his way over slowly, gripping his quinque tightly between  his hands, looking around anxiously as every sound he heard rattled him to the core, as if he was going to be jumped by whatever ghoul crawled out from behind the corner.

He could hear his coworkers behind him, and Hide swallowed, turning his head around one corner.

That was the right mask.  That had to be her.  Slightly weird on the smell but there were corpses in here for miles, so Hide chalked it up to that.  He somewhat wondered what she was still doing in here, but decided that he’d take it now.

No mercy.  Showing mercy would only spell destruction for him, especially in a scene like this.  He knew, logically, it may be best to take her alive, but after that lengthy discussion that had been had on the way over, Hide knew that taking Houji’s words to as literal as he could would be a fight he could be willing to argue for much, much easier.

So his hand gripped on Screeching Ghost, and without a thought to otherwise, he ran charging in.

Three Blades looked over, and stood there for a moment, before she took off running as far away from Hide as she could possibly get.  Hide sprinted after her, jumping over a few boxes and doing his best to stay within reach.

She made a sharp turn, and Hide didn’t follow her fast enough.  Planting his leg down solidly to turn, Hide screamed in pain as the bear trap beneath him slammed shut.  Fire erupted all down his leg, and he looked down automatically.  It wasn’t closed all the way, for whatever reason, but it hurt so much…  And that leg wasn’t coming back, and if Hide stayed here much longer, she’d be gone.

So he swallowed and pressed his quinque to the back of his leg, about mid-calf, the same place where his leg was in the trap, and pressed his way through.

That hurt as well, and Hide screamed once more, proceeding to fall over and land with a thud on the ground.  But he felt his leg beginning to heal, so he pushed himself to stand up, leaning on his quinque for a moment.

His kagune came out, wrapping around where his leg had been cut off, to be used as a temporary substitute, and Hide took off running once more, albeit slower than he had been before that.  She had to be up ahead; Hide could still smell her, could still hear her running.

There she was.  Hide could see her, even as she ducked behind a pile of cinder blocks.  And so he spun around, and reached out, spinning Screeching Ghost to gain momentum, before he used both hands to slash across the back of Three Blade’s neck, effectively cutting her head right off.

Her body crumpled easily under the touch, and Hide skidded to a stop, hollering back towards where he thought his coworkers were,  “I’ve killed her!”

He panted lightly, body shaking, before the adrenaline begun to wear off, and Hide slumped down, falling on his bottom as he let Screeching Ghost fall from his hands.  Something…  Something about this felt wrong.  Smelt wrong.

So Hide moved to look over at the body, and watched in horror as the head rolled out of the mask.

That wasn’t Three Blades’ face.  Not with a look of sheer panic and fear, and a duct-taped shut mouth.  And Hide began shaking even more, covering his own mouth up as he stared for a long moment, before he slowly picked up the mask, looking at the head.

Inside the mask, there was a piece of paper taped in, and Hide couldn’t help but stare at it in the most morbid manner possible.

_ ‘Better luck next time!  Feed this to ghoul-chan for me, Houji!’ _

At that moment, before Hide could get much further in any train of thought, Houji came running over, hollering Hide’s name.

And Hide heard without truly listening, and just looked up and over, mumbling,  “It was a human.”

In fact, those were the only words that seemed to come out of Hide’s mouth;  It was a human.  What he had killed was human.  She was trying to escape.  He was supposed to protect humans, and he had killed one.

Houji managed to lead him outside after a few moments, and Hide, who finally felt his leg finish regrowing, merely bent over and vomited again, shaking the entire time, unable to truly process what had happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oftentimes, those who are not trained in how to compartmentalize their own feelings are unable to cope with the things they are exposed to.


	6. Act 2, Scene 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternatively, The Albatross; A Noose Around His Neck

As a rule, Hide despised being called into his father’s office.  Granted, it had been close to two years now, since he had awoken with a kakuhou in his back and a declaration of what he had become, but the strong sense that he would only be walking closer and closer to the solemn confirmation that his father was truly sorry, Hideyoshi, but the CCG felt that he was more of a walking danger to other humans than he was useful, and it was time for him to die.

Hide’s fingers wrapped and unwrapped themselves in a repetitive manner on the briefcase handle that had come to house his quinque (the case he once held it in having long been broken by another ghoul in an anti-Aogiri mission a year prior).  The repetitive motions helped quell the worst of his anxiety, even as Hide found it slipping into a pattern that he often heard rattling against the back of his skull.  If his mental count ended on a number divisible by four, he told himself, then this was a good meeting.  If it ended on a number that wasn’t, it was a bad meeting.

Hide wasn’t sure when the door to his father’s office appeared, but he was sure what number his fingers stopped on.  Forty eight.  This should be a good meeting.

So he knocked, and upon being given permission to walk in, Hide did so, sitting in the middle chair, right in between two people he didn’t want to be there.

Hide placed his briefcase at his feet, and looked between Haise and Akira for a moment, before he redirected his gaze to his father, swallowing slightly uncomfortably.  “Is this everybody?”

“Everybody sans Special Class Arima,”  Yoshitoki said grimly,  “he’s unable to make it to this meeting.  However, his hand will be involved in this project as well.”

Hide was silent for a moment, looking uncomfortably at Haise, who had kept his head low the entire time, hands grasped anxiously in his lap.

“Director,”  Akira began from Hide’s left side,  “I’m afraid I’m not drawing a conclusion.”  That was tactful, Hide noted, especially for Akira.  He had been familiar with her being more blunt--then again…  This was in front of his father.  People tended to be more tactful in front of him.

“As I’m sure at least two people in this room are aware,”  Yoshitoki began, directing his look to Hide and Haise for a moment,  “the CCG has been studying the possibilities of human-ghoul hybrids.  Both rank ones here have been involved with the Quinx project for the last two years, allowing us to gain enough research to move forward with this endeavor.”

“What do you mean, ‘move forward’?”  Hide asked softly, aware of the sweat sliding down the back of his neck, making the stands of his hair that hadn’t been tied into a ponytail stick uncomfortably.

“Exactly as it sounds,”  Yoshitoki replied, sliding a group of folders in front of the three of them,  “For those who are unfamiliar with the Quinx project, this folder contains all necessary and relevant information towards the cause.  These additional folders contain our current candidates.  There’s eight of them, from a variety of backgrounds.  We’ve listed our preferential ones, though it will be determined by you three.”

“Director,”  Haise began, looking up then.  Continuing on nervously, Haise bit his lip,  “Why us?”

Yoshitoki sighed,  “There’s been…  Opposition to this project.  As I’m sure both you and Hideyoshi have felt already, many of the higher ranked investigators do not appreciate my…  Methods.  First Class Mado is, frankly, the best choice to take this squad in under her main squad.  You and Rank One Hideyoshi would be mentors; you’ve both more experience with handling the attributes of ghoul-like skills.”

“This sounds like a horrible idea,”  Hide said, looking at the folders in front of him,  “especially knowing most other members of the CCG opposed it. Frankly speaking, sir, this sounds like the last resort of somebody who went on a World of Warcraft raid with Leeroy Jenkins.”

Hide could feel the incredulous looks from Akira and Haise on either side of him.  But nonetheless, Hide went on with the train of thought that had often gotten him into more trouble than not.

“Hide--”  Haise began, trying to cut him off,  “I don’t think now’s a good time for this conversation.”

“It sounds exactly like we’ve run in against Aogiri with no way out,”  Hide said, more-or-less verbally overrunning Haise’s attempts to silence Hide’s protesting,  “so we’ve all decided to make ourselves into something we’ve very little control over, and we’ve put our children on the front lines of a war they don’t understand.  You can’t expect me to agree to something like this.  I don’t--I won’t.  I’m having no part in this.”

“Rank One,”  Hide heard Akira begin,  “You need to hold your tongue.  Your personal ethics have no place in this conversation.”

“It’s not right!”  Hide ignored Akira, continuing to barrel on with his rant as he swallowed and stood up angrily, clenching his fists,  “It’s not right.  At age three, you indoctrinated me into killing ghouls--and at five I was picking up weapons and learning how to kill with them!  That haunts you, your entire life, even in sports, how you would hit a place and where to hit in order to kill a ghoul.”  Hide inhaled, plunging back into a rant that felt a bit too intimate for the audience, but kept going before he could stop himself,  “I was thirteen, and had to be lectured to not shoot near eyes, because that could kill, and yet I knew very well that I was always aiming to kill, because the target is a ghoul.”

“Before I knew who I was, I knew how to kill a ghoul.  I wasn’t good enough to be the next Arima, not by a long shot, but I knew how to murder before I was ten years old.”

He swallowed, clenching his fists, and then Hide managed to put up a smile.  “Why is this okay?  You ask me to agree to this sort of thing?  This is a curse.  Everything about this is a curse.  Thank you, Director, for allowing me to leave you.  The best gift you ever gave me was permission to leave.  And _fuck you_ for dragging me back.”

“I don’t believe you understand,”  Yoshitoki said  as Hide ceased his tirade,  “you’ve no choice on whether this project continues onwards, Naoyoshi.”

And with the rebuttal involving that name, Hide felt his chest tighten in pain, and he was suddenly reminded of Akira and Haise in the same room as him.  But before he could rebuttal, Yoshitoki continued on,  “These people have all gone very willingly, and they’ve benefits to choosing this life.  Whether or not it has your personal seal of approval on it, this is something that _is_ going to happen.  Now, you can sit down and _help_ us decide who is the best, or you can walk out.”

“That is, of course, if you want to leave,”  Yoshitoki replied full of a terrifying calm,  “You’re permitted to leave the entire CCG at any moment, Naoyoshi.  However, it’ll be a pity--I’ve no reason to uphold my end of the bargain.  How did you phrase it, exactly?  ‘I’ll do whatever the CCG needs me to, so long as you save him’?”

Hide’s breath caught in his throat then, and he felt his hands clam up, slowly opening his mouth to whisper ‘no.’

“I believe you’ve forgotten, Rank One Washuu,”  Yoshitoki replied, still with that terrifying calm,  “that without the protection of the CCG, you’re no more protected than any other ghoul.  If you leave, it takes one word from me to have many of the investigators in this very building begin hunting you down to bring you to either Cochlea, or death.”

And then Yoshitoki handed the folders to Hide’s shaking hands, a smile on his face,  “The future of the Quinx is on your head.  After all, it would be a shame if, instead of being seen as a compassionate human, like Rank One Sasaki is, they were all considered to be disrespectful monsters like _you_.”

Hide knew he was being manipulated.  It came from being good at manipulation; Hide had always been good at getting what it was he wanted--could play his brother like a puppet on strings, on a good day.  But this was merely a reminder: Hide had no chance against the other members of his family.  There was nothing he could do to stop his father.

All he had ever wanted was a life free and independent of the CCG.  And that thought made him aware of the tears that had started to slip down his cheeks as he clenched his fists once more.  His body shook slightly, as the realisation that no matter what he did, he would merely be a pawn--for it wasn’t just his life and agency he was gambling with; Hide would throw that away in a heartbeat if it meant getting away.

No, he also was responsible for Haise.  Who was looking at him with a strange mix of horror and concern, and was reaching out to touch his arm gently, and _oh_ …  Oh, how Hide longed to fall to his knees and beg Haise for his forgiveness for extending his life, but at the cost of being a puppet.

Instead, he merely took the documents woodenly, feeling his cheeks grow hot, even as tears continued to spill out.

“I’ll help my fellow members look over the list of applicants,”  Hide heard his voice saying, without truly being aware of it,  “Is there any number in particular that you would like us to come back with?”

“Four.”  Yoshitoki said, “we want one for each RC Cell type.”

“Understood,”  Hide heard Haise say as Hide merely continued to stare at the folders in his hands,  “When’s the date you need them back, Director?  Of course, we’ll notify you with our decision as soon as we can, but a deadline would be appreciated.”

“You have a week from today,”  Yoshitoki replied,  “Anything else?”

“No sir.”

“Then you’re dismissed.”

They stepped out quickly and quietly, a definite damper on the mood.  Hide scrubbed at his tears, trying to get them to go away, before he looked solidly at his feet.  The count had been forty-eight.  Why hadn’t it been a good meeting?  He swallowed, before wiping at his face once more.

He wasn’t sure why Haise ended up hugging him, but after a moment, Hide found himself desperately hugging back, feeling like Haise was the one thing holding him afloat in an emotional sea of turmoil.  Granted, on one level, Hide knew that he probably deserved half of what was said to him, but nonetheless, it ripped at him and he whimpered a bit, trying to keep himself from crying once more.

_Don’t let them see you flinch_ , Hide told himself, pushing away from Haise and swallowing uncomfortably.

“Sorry.  We need to pick through these files, right?  Let’s get to work.”

“You and Sasaki pick,”  Akira said after a moment, watching them for a moment,  “You two are going to inevitably have more influence over the candidates than I am.  I’ll give the final okay before we all turn it into the Director, but you two pick first.”

“Understood,”  Haise cut across Hide, confirming before Hide could possibly protest to Haise’s remarks,  “We’ll try to have it back to you this week for any final confirmations, and then we can all discuss it?”

“Sounds like a plan, Sasaki,”  Akira nodded,  “Why don’t you two go get some coffee and get some fresh air?  Until we’re assigned to another case, we’ve some relative free time.  And I’m sure our efforts are about to turn into training time for the future Quinx Squad.”

“Alright, Squad Leader,”  Haise laughed softly, just gently gripping Hide’s arm and pulling him out of the way,  “We’ll have the information back to you as soon as we can!  You take care of yourself, okay?  We’ll see you soon!”

“See you soon,”  Akira said back, waving for a moment as Haise and Hide made their way out of the CCG.

Hide didn’t look up at Haise.  He felt the loud screams from the inside of his head yelling a million thoughts at him as loudly as he possibly hear it.

God, he hated it.

But he tuned into what Haise was saying, and bit his lip.

“So we’ve got eight files.  Coffee sounds like a good way to start, right?”

“Ah…  Yeah, right.”  Hide nodded after a moment, swallowing once more as he asked,  “What coffee shop do you want to go to?”

“Oh, there’s one relatively nearby from here!”  Haise chirped out, smiling at Hide adoringly, “I get coffee there a lot.  They brew a mean _americano_ I think you’ll like--I’ve noticed that’s what you drink when we’ve collaborated in the past.”

Hide put a smile on his face, sniffling to get the last of the tears out and away from him then.  “Yeah.  Sounds great.  Lead the way and we can begin looking, right?  There’ll be six of us…  Two rinkaku, two bikaku, an ukaku, and a koukaku…”

“I don’t recognise any of these names,”  Haise said as he looked quickly at the tabs marked on each of the folders,  “One’s a girl from the seventy-sixth class, two boys from the seventy-ninth, and then four students from the seventy-seventh class.  That’s all the top denotes.”

“Got it,”  Hide said as he followed Haise inside the nearby cafe.  Then they both sat down, and ordered--Hide ordering the americano that Haise had recommended, while Haise ordered a usual black coffee, no sweetener.

“Ah--can I get a blueberry danish as well?”  Hide asked after a moment, suddenly aware of how much better the sweet would most likely make him feel.  “Yes, thank you.”

And with that, he turned his attention to the work in front of them.  “So we’ve eight kids?”

“Yeah.  We’ve got them in order of best to worst potential.”  Haise replied, sliding the folders over,  “Yonebayashi Saiko, Hsiao Ching-Li, Urie Kuki, Aura Shinsanpei, Shirazu Ginshi, Higemaru Touma, Mutsuki Tooru, and Yonebayashi Shin’ya.”

“So logically,”  Hide began with the slightest bit of a sarcastic and bitter tinge,  “We’d want Yonebayashi, Hsiao, Urie, and Aura.  But then, knowing our luck, we’d end with Shirazu, Higemaru, Mutsuki, and Yonebayashi.  But in actuality, we’re going to pick a mix of things, because you and I enjoy the weight of living.”

“I don’t think we need both Yonebayashi siblings,”  Haise said as he pulled both those files over, beginning to look at them,  “Saiko tested much better than Shin’ya; in all honesty, it looks like Shin’ya just barely qualified for the top eight, and Saiko is significantly more impressive by these scores alone.”

“Then Yonebayashi Saiko stays,”  Hide replied, pushing Saiko to one end of the table, and Shin’ya to the other.  Their coffee came back then, along with Hide’s pastry, and they both quietly thanked their server, before turning back to work.

“Hsiao Ching-Li?”  Haise asked then as they began to pour over her file,  “She’s done remarkably well in her studies, and is a student from the Sunlit Garden--”

“No.”  Hide cut Haise off then, gripping around the cup of his americano tightly,  “I don’t trust any student who came out of there.  Besides, she’d be better suited to staying away from us; we’re trying to prove that this enhances an average investigator, right?  She’s marked to be one of the best in her class, and frankly, anybody who’s spent any time in the Garden is a grade higher than a regular investigator, and we both know that.  Look at Arima…”

He took a sip of his coffee, hoping it would tone down his inner salt.  He wanted nothing to do with anybody from the Garden.  It’d be much better that way.

“We’ll come back to Hsiao,”  Haise said, in a tone that said he’d be willing to argue for her,  “How about Urie?  Academy Scholarship Student, proven to have high dedication and skill.  He’d be a strong addition to the team.”

Hide nodded after a moment, deciding the surly young man in the picture accompanying the folder could be a useful asset to the squad.  “You’re right.  Well, that’s half our squad we’re condemning--”

“ _Hide_ ,”  Haise said lightly, smiling slightly angrily,  “every person we’re looking at volunteered.  You can read it for yourself, for each person we’ve looked at.  They volunteered.”

Hide clenched his fists for a moment, before he proceeded to shove the danish he had nearby into his mouth, just nodding and accepting Haise’s stern admonishment.

“How about Aura?”  Haise suggested next,  “Another Academy Scholarship Student, related to Special Class Aura Kiyoko.”

“I don’t think so,”  Hide said after a moment,  “specifically because he’s related to Special Class Aura.  When…  When the Director was choosing partners to assign me to, he had to always be careful to make it look as if I had no special treatment being given to me.  I used to work in Division Two, a lifetime ago with the raid on Anteiku, as an investigation assistant.  Unfortunately, once I became a Quinx, and an official investigator, I couldn’t be back in Division Two, despite the fact that that’s where I’m better suited to, because the Director is friends with Special Class Marude, and my brother is a commander there.  It looks too much like favoritism, and then it took a very long time to decide where to put me, so nobody could play an inter-political game of favoritism.”

Hide took a beat, before he said,  “What I was trying to say is it’ll look like of _course_ we’re giving Special Class Aura’s family a tap into the program that he doesn’t rightfully deserve.  It says great things are expected from him, but frankly so are things from you and I.  And putting that much pressure on someone who’s already expected to do that well?  That’s not fair to him.”

Haise frowned for a moment, before he set Aura Shinsapei’s file to the side with Yonebayashi Shin’ya’s.  “You’re right.  Shirazu Ginshi?”

“Poor grades,”  Hide noted,  “however his teachers noted he has a strong compassion for other individuals, and has a great attention to surrounding.  It’s easier to learn how to investigate by doing so, rather than sitting in a classroom.  I--”  Hide choked himself off for a moment, before correcting himself,  “My mentor, Special Class Houji, his mentee prior to me was salutatorian of his academy.  I got to know the guy for a bit--he was great at a lot of the paperwork, had the markings of someone who would someday be a good investigator.  However, I’ve been told that no matter how good he was in school, compared to the other investigators in the Twentieth Ward, he wasn’t good enough.  Granted, you had Special Class Houji, the late Special Class Amon, Associate Special Class Suzuya, and First Class Mado, who are all basically living legends, but the point remains--the things you did in school aren’t always resembling how the real world works.”

“Then Shirazu’s a Quinx now,”  Haise agreed, putting Shirazu’s file on top of Yonebayashi Saiko’s and Urie Kuki’s.

“Higemaru Touma is our next on the list,”  Haise said, opening that file up,  “Do you want to look at Mutsuki Tooru?”

“Yeah.”  Hide replied, taking Mutsuki’s file and beginning to skim it down.

The young man looked like an echo of Kaneki Ken, in a body darker than Hide’s own.  Nervous and uncomfortable, anxiety seemed to radiate off the boy looking at him in more ways than one.  And then Hide began skimming down the information listed in the file.

Name, age, class, blood type, gender--

Hide suddenly felt a personal desire to edit the file for the correct terminology altogether.  But really…  ‘Female (born, choosing to live as a man)’ told him one thing, and one thing alone.

He was going to punch whoever put this file together.  And then, when _that_ was out of the way…  Hide wanted to protect Mutsuki Tooru with every ounce of strength he had left in his body.  The kid, on paper, seemed like he had made it to the table by some sort of unfortunate fate.

Hide had stopped believing in fate, unfortunately for the nineteen year old Mutsuki Tooru.  There was no way someone that delicate would survive in a cruel and harsh environment without help.

“I like Mutsuki Tooru,”  he said, hating the way the words dripped out of his mouth,  “I know the file says he’s had behavioural issues, and he’s at the bottom of our list of choices, but…  Something about this kid tells me he’ll be the strongest asset we have.  He’s got a good work ethic it says, and he’s willing to compromise where he has to.”  And then, Hide swallowed,  “Besides, any kid who’s lost his family to ghouls who’s signing up to have this sort of thing happen to him hits the curiosity button pretty hard, you know?”

Haise looked up, blinking his big grey eyes at Hide for a moment, before he nodded in agreement,  “Alright then.  If someone’s hit your curiosity like that, who am I to say no?  Besides, I’m actually a little afraid if we get a group of people who are all used to having high achievements, they’ll push themselves too hard, and end up being in a relatively bad place with powers they can’t control.”

“And really…”  Haise trailed off, finishing off his coffee,  “I’ve heard similar reports about students from that academy.  Not just Mutsuki, but other students have been reported of the same thing.  But all those other students became incredible investigators.  I’m not saying that you know, these bad rumors mean that Mutsuki will be amazing, but they are not indicative of the fact Mutsuki is going to be a bad person.  And frankly, keeping that in mind, I’d put a bet on him.”

“Besides!”  Haise added onto his train of thought,  “If people believed in rumors, then people wouldn’t like you and I.”

“People _still_ don’t like you and I,”  Hide sighed, slumping over.  “So…  Urie, Shirazu, Mutsuki, and Yonebayashi, then?”

“Sounds like a plan,”  Haise agreed and smiled,  “We can get these in to Akira tomorrow; I think for the rest of the day, you and I need to have a fun day of not doing anything related to work whatsoever.”

“Don’t you have a lecture to be teaching later?”  Hide asked lightly, clearly trying to tease Haise,  “You’re so popular I can never tell.”

“Teaching you how to not yell at people!”  Haise laughed softly, putting the files into two appropriate piles,  “Jeez, Naoyoshi, yelling at the Director like that?  What were you thinking?”

Hide stilled.   _Never_ had the man in front of him ever used that name.  Ever.  That name was dead to him, along with the daughter that his parents had wanted to be docile and kind.  He had only ever been Hideyoshi to Kaneki.  Only ever been Hideyoshi to Haise.

(Granted, in some rare moments, Hide had given Kaneki permission to use the name that only people who Hide _wanted_ to know could use it.  It was culture, it was custom--and there were only three people who had ever known that name.  And with Hide’s mother long dead and buried, and Kaneki now being Haise, only Hide’s grandmother ever cooed out the name Keutoranke while referring to Hide.)

(Oh, how Hide missed Kaneki whispering that name when they were alone and comfortable.)

“Don’t call me that,”  Hide didn’t mean for his voice to come out that harshly,  “don’t _ever_ call me that.  That name is dead to me.  Forget he _ever_ called me that name.”  Hide swallowed, standing up.  Some part of him knew he should just explain, that Haise didn’t understand, and didn’t know better, but in that moment, Hide honestly found himself unable to care,  “I’ll see you, Haise.”

And then Hide found himself storming out of the coffee shop, not caring to where he went, so long as it was _away_ from where Haise was, and away from where anybody he could recognise was.

Hide groaned after a good while of walking, not particularly having paid much attention to the places he had been walking to.  Hide knew he should apologise to Haise, for snapping like that and storming off the way he had.  But Hide couldn’t bring himself to walk back and do so.

Well, they did live in the modern world.  So Hide pulled out his phone, ducking to the front of a building, as to be out of people’s ways, and began scrolling for a number.  Right, right--Sasaki Haise.   Pressing the number to dial it, Hide sighed, then put the phone to his ear.

Haise was Hide’s own personal albatross, hung on Hide’s neck, allowing everyone to know that Hide was the one who had brought the curse upon himself.

“I’m sorry,”  is the first thing that comes out of Hide’s mouth when the phone picks up,  “for running off the way I had.  For yelling at you.  You didn’t know what you were saying was upsetting to me.  I apologise for my actions.”

“You’re forgiven,”  Haise’s voice comes back from the other end of the phone line instantaneously,  “I apologise for upsetting you.  I won’t use that name again.  I thought it was alright, since your father used it.  I didn’t realise the amount of distress it caused you.”

“...”  Hide heard himself sniffle for a moment, before he wiped at his face once more,  “Yeah, I…  That was a low blow of him.  He knows I don’t like that name.  I haven’t responded to it since I was…  Since I was eight, probably.  Seven or eight.  My father wasn’t exactly enthused when I made it rather clear that his daughter was another son.”

“Oh,”  Haise said calmly, seeming to understand more now,  “I’m so sorry, Hide.  That’s wrong of him.”

“Not your fault,”  Hide mumbled,  “but you’re forgiven anyways.  I just… Called to apologise, is all.  I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah, of course,”  Haise replied lightly,  “Take care, Hide.”

“I will.”  Hide hung up the phone, putting it in his pocket.  He took a moment to exhale slowly, trying to repress the urge to scream that seemed to boil up under every bit of his skin.

He couldn’t make a scene here, no matter how upsetting it was.

So Hide decided to walk more.  May as well burn the feeling of uncomfortable wrongness out of his skin by walking.  He had hoped it would go away when he had consented for another round under a knife (albeit, this time had involved plenty of resculpting a chest, complete with rc suppressants and a good month and a half out of commission and sitting in his room in the main Washuu house, but the point remained) but it seemed that no, it hadn’t.

Hide wasn’t sure where his roving had led him; after a while the streets of Tokyo merely began to blend together, a combination of autopilot and muscle memory taking Hide to places.  Time seemed to slip past him in a way that he couldn’t bring himself to care about, lost in his own thoughts, of what would happen, and why it would.

Of the people whose fates he had sealed, and his motivations for doing so.

Logically, Hide knew that people would volunteer.  But they had to be desperate, didn’t they?  After all, most people who worked in the CCG on any level didn’t just sign up for this sort of thing, not without good reason.  And especially not children…

Hide only looked up when he felt a person grab him, and a voice screaming for him to stop, look out.  Hide’s movement stopped as he was pulled back, a car’s horn blaring loudly, less than a third of a metre away from him.

“I should look both ways before crossing the street,”  Hide heard himself say, looking back on his saviour with a slightly thankful smile.  And oh, if only it wasn’t the same face he had condemned earlier in the day, then maybe he could have been thankful to his saviour better than this.

Why did Mutsuki Tooru look so alarmed at him.

“Are you okay?”  While Mutsuki’s voice trembled, and it was said softly, but intensely, his gaze did not waver from Hide’s own,  “There’s another answer, you know.  If you need to talk, without someone judging you, I’m here.  Come on…  Let’s get you away from this street.  I’m Mutsuki Tooru.  What’s your name?”

Some days, Hide really debated on never answering the name question again.  But this kid--no, Mutsuki didn’t deserve that.

“Washuu Hideyoshi.  But I prefer Hide,”  Hide smiled awkwardly,  “So I’m sure this entire thing just got really awkward.”

Mutsuki blinked at Hide, before he smiled awkwardly back, still refusing to let go of Hide’s arm.  “Not really.  I’ve had worse happen.  But I mean it--if you need to talk, I am here.  Let’s get you out of here.”

Hide let Mutsuki pull him along, and before he could really stop himself, he found himself saying,  “I read your file today.  For the Quinx project.”

Mutsuki seemed to still a little, giving Hide a slightly alarmed look,  “Oh?”  He asked, trying to keep his voice light enough to sound like he wasn’t trying to make someone more upset.

Hide knew that tone.  A long time ago, Hide used that same tone to help Kaneki calm down.  (How long ago now?  Three years?  Felt so much longer…)  But nonetheless, he appreciated Mutsuki’s efforts, letting that tone try and simmer down the mess of noise screaming in his head.

“Yeah,”  Hide said softly,  “Due to how the squad’s being set up, Rank One Sasaki and I got to tap who we wanted.  Is it too early to give you congratulations, Mutsuki?”

Hide kept the _-kun_ honourific at the end of Mutsuki’s name, taking note of the _ore_ pronoun.  Mutski wanted to be seen as male as he was, then Hide would comply.  After all, Hide hated it when people questioned him too.

“Ah…  I would say so,”  Mutsuki said softly after a moment or two,  “Just in case somebody somewhere changes their mind about wanting me.”

“Psh,”  Hide waved a hand,  “the only person who _may_ protest to you being a member isn’t part of the people who make the choices.  You were in the top eight, after all!”

“That’s kind of you to say, sir,”  Mutsuki said, watching Hide carefully,  “but…  If I may say so, I’m pretty sure you’re saying it as a way to distract me and change the subject.”

“Whaaat?”  Hide dragged the world out, trying to smile, even as he felt his throat clench up involuntarily, the arm Mutsuki wasn’t holding onto still beginning to tap his thigh anxiously.  If it ended on a four, a thought somewhere half-buried in Hide’s subconscious rattled out,  it wouldn’t be that bad.

“You’re trying to avoid something,”  Mutsuki said in concern,  “I don’t know what it is, but letting it stay pent up like that…  It’s not good.  It’ll explode on you.  And it may hurt the people you care about.  Talking to someone…  It may help you.”

“Maybe I just don’t see why someone would want this curse on them,”  Hide said listlessly, before the words began to spill out once more--like he was verbally vomiting, like nothing he could do would make the words stop once they began,  “I’ve spent awhile trying to figure why anybody would _willingly_ give away their humanity, for something that’s dangerous and will ruin their life.  There’s no reason for it, logically speaking.  What sort of compensation is _anybody_ being offered to take this undertaking on?”

“Maybe I’m just the product of the generation I grew up in,”  Hide replied,  “but the CCG is just like any other corporation.  Except this time around, once they have their claws in you, you can’t ever leave.  You can always quit a job.  But not if you’re turning everything key to making you a human.  You’ve basically signed up so a man can play the part of Dr. Frankenstein on you.”

“Well, you don’t know the people who signed up,”  Mutsuki said flatly,  “for some of us, it’s the only opportunity we’ll have.  And for some of us, humanity is more of a vague concept.  It’s like knowing that Frankenstein isn’t the monster, but being wise enough to understand that Frankenstein is the monster.”

“You don’t know me,”  Mutsuki added on then, swallowing as he let go of Hide,  “but I’m going to tell you--this is the only way I’ll be an investigator.  And frankly, I don’t know if you knew, but it’s guaranteed benefits, even if we can no longer participate in the program.  It’s a way for some of us here to build a life.  For some of us, it’s the only way.”

Hide stopped, before he shook his head sadly,  “I don’t think you understand--”

“I don’t think _you_ do,”  Mutsuki swallowed, looking at his feet then,  “you don’t have to like it.  But you don’t need to assume that I’m unaware of what I’m joining.  I spent time in the Academy; I know what investigators do.  The concept of being a human with a built in quinque means I’m no longer powerless.  And for some of us, powerlessness is the worst thing.”

Hide stopped then, before he sighed and shook his head unhappily.  Well…  There was no way he would be able to talk this kid out of it, would he?  Hide had no chance in hell to change this kid’s mind, but…  But he could respect that.  The desire to not be helpless.  Nobody _really_ wanted to be helpless, and the way Mutsuki said that…  Alluded to things Hide didn’t want to broach.  It wasn’t his business.  If someone wanted Hide to know something, they would tell him, he had come to find.

Hide was good at ignoring things people wanted him to ignore.

“...I can’t say I like it,”  Hide said honestly,  “but I _do_ understand your sentiments about feeling powerless.  It isn’t a pleasant feeling, and I can see why you would want to change that.”  He was sure this sentiment wasn’t something Mutsuki hadn’t heard before.  But sometimes validation worked like a charm.

“I believe I have to be going,”  Hide murmured after a moment,  “I’ve places to be.  It was pleasant meeting you, Mutsuki.  I hope we can meet under better circumstances next time.”

Instantaneously, Hide turned and began to walk away, leaving another confused young man behind him.

Hide did his best to remove any regrets.

* * *

“These four, huh?”  Akira looked over Haise and Hide’s candidates the next morning.

“Yes,”  Haise confirmed, nodding,  “We felt that Yonebayashi and Urie were two of the most beneficial candidates, and that the addition of Shirazu would bring the best sort of group dynamic.”

“Why not Hsiao?”  Akira inquired,  “She seems a better fit than Mutsuki.  More devoted to the CCG’s cause, being from the Garden.”

“That was my call,”  Hide admitted,  “I’ve admittedly some bias against the Garden.  But generally I believe in letting children learn murder once they’re old enough to understand the concept of death.”

“You seem…  Perturbed,”  Akira said in response,  “Does this have to do with the argument around this?”

Hide bit his lip, before he replied, about as bluntly as he could,  “I remember being turned into a killer with no qualms about ending a life, and it took me a while to unlearn that conditioning.  I’m well aware that should any member of the Quinx rampage, they will be put down.  I’m concerned how easily it would be for any former member of the Garden to look at their squadmates as ghouls, and not be able to work past that bias.”

“I’m only playing devil’s advocate,”  Haise began,  “but are you _sure_ that’s the only argument you have against it, even though it does seem like a relatively valid one?”

“What other arguments would anybody here like to hear?”  Hide replied,  “Besides, the Garden isn’t big on formal education.  I’m not fond of having to catch someone up to speed on that while I’m trying to teach them to make their murder-organ murder stuff.”

“How articulate,”  Akira’s voice was dry and she shook her head, clearly trying to express her displeasure with the way that Hide had phrased that,  “though I see your point of view.”

“Well, you can’t say that I’m not witty,”  Hide hummed, before he said,  “That’s my most major complaint; between the concern of Hsiao looking at her squadmates as a ghoul, and possibly playing catch-up on formal education…  It’s too much.  Maybe if we had to do a phase two, then at that point we could consider bringing her, and the other three aboard, but until then…”

“I understand your concern,”  Akira said,  “And do you agree with these choices, Haise?”

“I would have preferred Hsiao,”  Haise replied,  “instead of Mutsuki.  But seeing the concern, I can agree completely; it’s too worrisome.  We also didn’t accept Yonebayashi Shin’ya; we didn’t want both siblings, and frankly, he just barely scored within the top eight, and didn’t have anything outstanding to us.  We discounted Aura Shinsanpei because of his relation to Special Class Aura; it looks too much as if we’re playing favourites, with family of a Special Class investigator, and it puts too much pressure on him already.  And putting Higemaru Touma in, knowing we have some already competitive people in here…  It’s going to be a mess to keep them from fighting one another if we added him into the group.”

“I like competitive people,”  Akira said, almost wistful for a moment, as if her mind had slipped to another subject altogether for a moment,  “I’ve found those kinds of people push themselves well beyond others would have given up.”  Then she blinked, nodding once more.  “It’s a sound decision however.  I agree with your choices entirely.  We’ll have these four turned into the Director so their surgeries can begin as soon as possible.”

“I’ll bring them over,”  Hide said, standing up,  “I need to run past Division Two anyways; I volunteered to grab lunch for my family and I.  And Matsuri takes about seventeen years to decide on what kind of takeout he’s going to give me a hard time for being kind and paying for his dirtbag self.”

Akira’s lips twitched for a moment,  “Will you bring me back something as well?”

Hide dramatically flopped over, grabbing the photos,  “Yeah.  I’m going to Kiji, Marunouchi.  You ever been?”

“Once,”  Akira said,  “I had that beef tenderloin okonomiyaki.  So if you could grab me one?”

“Yeah.  I’ll call when I’m on my way back.”  Hide smiled, and then ducked out the door, heading to his father’s office next.  May as well get that unfortunate undertaking out of the way…

Knuckles rapped out once, twice, before entering.  “I apologise for disturbing you,”  Hide began in an obnoxiously bright voice,  “but I brought some files and a desire to be the best son you have by winning your love back with food--”

“Oh.  It’s nice to see you again.”

_I don’t like the people from the Garden, Father._  Hide could hear a very young, soft voice whisper in the back of his skull,   _They’re cruel.  Especially that one boy who keeps staring at me.  But I know why he hates me…_

“Furuta,”  Hide said flatly, not bothering with an honourific,  “I didn’t know they let the rats into this building.”

“It’s been too long,”  Furuta Nimura smiled back at Hide, completely oblivious to Hide’s dislike,  “Can you blame me?  I just came to talk to the Director for a few moments about a very important mission of mine.  I didn’t know you’d be here.  How have you been?  You don’t look eight anymore.”

Hide did his best to live his life to not be cruel.  It wasn’t in his nature, to harm others.  However, his life had become against his nature.  So Hide smiled back to match Furuta’s own smile, before he said very calmly,  “You know, Frittata, I’m _very_ hungry.  So if you’d be so kind as to remove yourself from my way to the Director’s desk to turn in some documents and get information as to what he wants from lunch, I’d appreciate that.”

Hide stretched his smile just a bit wider, inhaling through his nose.  “Smells delicious in here, after all.”

“That’s so gross!”  Furuta laughed, although whether it was false or not was yet to be addressed.  However, he did back up.  “Ahhh, I need you to make it quick, Washuu--I _was_ in the middle of a very important discussion, which you so _very rudely_ interrupted.”

“I don’t see how important it can be,”  Hide began, doing his best imitation of Matsuri,  “After all, they let _you_ conduct it.”  Then he sighed and placed the files on Yoshitoki’s desk,  “We made our descision.  And I’m going to Kiji, Marunouchi to pick up lunch.  What did you want?”

Yoshitoki’s eyes hid a glimmer of amusement,  “Ah, thank you, Hideyoshi.  And some pork yakisoba would be lovely.  Are you getting some for Matsuri?”

“I mean, if I have to,”  Hide groaned out jokingly, smiling an actual smile now,  “He should just go home to Iyo.  She asked me today if he’d come home for dinner.  She’s planning something delicious.  Help me bully him into giving her the time of day?”

Yoshitoki openly laughed then,  “I’ll see what I can do.  Get going now, before you get much more swamped.”

Hide nodded and saluted Yoshitoki, heading out.  “I’ll be back soon!”

“It was lovely seeing you too, little sister,”  Furuta cooed as Hide walked out of the door.

Hide felt his body clench up, before he promptly slammed Yoshitoki’s door closed, moving far too quickly and angrily down the halls towards Division Two.

_Nimura’s my brother, isn’t he?_

“Matsuri,”  Hide promptly barged into Matsuri’s office, no sense of decorum needed,  “Big brother.  Brother.  Brother brother, my darling brother whom I love more than life itself--”

“What do you _want_ , Yoshi?”  Matsuri’s voice was irritated, and his face promptly reflected it as Hide proceeded to sit himself into Matsuri’s lap.

“I was gonna buy you lunch!  You like okonomiyaki, right?”  Hide batted his eyes, grinning some more,  “Also, Iyo wants you home for dinner today.  She’s making your favourite!”

Matsuri rolled his own eyes, promptly pushing Hide off of his lap.  “I’m not picky.  Just get me anything.  I’ll consider it.”

“No, no, no considering,”  Hide laughed, but stood up and brushed himself off,  “just try, okay?  I know you don’t like her, but it’s lonely in our house.  At least give the poor girl the time of day.  You don’t have to like her, but acknowledging people exist every now and again is a good thing.”

“Go get lunch,”  Matsuri said,  “I’m not going to have a prolonged conversation with you about empathizing with people.  I’ll be here when you get back.”

Hide rolled his eyes then,  “Yes, almighty one.  You’re so edgy it feels like you’re a razor blade factory.  Should I play some Crawling, by Linkin Park, in order to compliment your dark emotions right now?”  Hide pulled out his phone for emphasis, flipping to Youtube to grab the song.

“I said _go_ , Hideyoshi!”  Matsuri snapped.

And with Hide ducked out, laughing loudly,  “You used my name!  Not a gender-neutral nickname!  I’m winning!”

* * *

 

And once more, time passed.  It had been another week from that date, and now Haise and Hide were in the middle of checking the four new members of the the Quinx Squad from the same hospital Hide himself had awoken in.

“Yes ma’am, there’s four of them,”  Haise repeated once more,  “Urie Kuki, Shirazu Ginshi, Mutsuki Tooru, and Yonebayashi Saiko.  Three boys and a girl, in that order.”

Hide sighed a bit, tapping his foot,  “They’re supposed to be discharged today?  They were all in surgery?”  Somehow, despite this being a CCG hospital, things took forever and a day to get done.

“Well, I’m afraid you don’t have the proper identification, Mr. Sasaki,”  The clerk in front of them said cheerily, before looking at Hide with a slightly annoyed look.  “And you are, sir?”

Hide internally felt like smiling, but instead merely pulled out his identification, sliding it across, saying in a saccharine sweet voice,  “Rank One Washuu Hideyoshi.  I really _do_ need my squadmates out.  Would you prefer me to have First Class Mado Akira to call and verify we are who we say we are?  Or I could have Director Yoshitoki call.  I’m sure it won’t be pleasant, though; they’re both very busy, and we were told to bring our squadmates back to Headquarters as soon as possible, and we _were_ informed they were to be released about forty-five minutes ago; they’re supposed to be elsewhere as of five minutes ago.”

On one hand, Hide knows how this makes him look, and sound--like an asshole who abuses his power, and has no problem taking the pleasure in it.  However, Hide felt a sick little bit of contentedness in watching the woman pale, before giving them the proper information to sign the Quinx out and where their rooms were to help them pack.

“Let’s get going, shall we?”  Hide chirped lightly to Haise, heading down the halls.  “I know the kids are supposed to move their stuff today, once they finish meeting with the Director, and then they have to deal with Shiba for a bit to get baselines and such.  Do you want to start their training proper tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow sounds best,”  Haise agreed as the two stopped in front of Urie Kuki’s room.  Haise knocked then, before he stepped inside, with Hide following.

“Hello, Urie,”  Haise smiled politely to the young man,  “I’m Rank One Sasaki Haise.  This is Rank One Washuu Hideyoshi.  We’re to be your mentors for the Quinx Squad.  We’ve checked you and your squadmates out, so if you want to finish your packing, we should be ready to leave when everybody else is.”

Urie, for his part, looked over and removed the headphones he had been wearing.  Urie wore an eyepatch, Hide took note, left side.  Nice knowing where his kakugan was…  It was probably still on, since it had only been a few days…  It took a while to learn to control that.

“Very well,”  Urie said in a flat, emotionless voice.  “I was wondering what took so long.”

“Red tape,”  Hide said then,  “But it’s been cut.  Welcome aboard, Rank Three.”

With that, both Haise and Hide excused themselves, heading next door to Shirazu Ginshi’s room.

“Hello,”  Hide said this time, grinning at the young man,  “I’m Rank One Washuu Hideyoshi.  All the cool kids call me Hide.  This is Rank One Sasaki Haise.  We’re your mentors in the Quinx Squad.  Welcome aboard, and pack your things!  We’re grabbing everybody and getting you out of here.”

“That quickly, huh?”  Shirazu said, standing up eagerly, stopping for a moment.  The eyepatch on his right side was ruining his depth perception, a problem Hide understood well,  “When are we getting started?  When do I get to meet the rest of the squad?”

“Well, the fastest we can get everybody packed,”  Hide replied and smiled more,  “Soon as everybody’s ready, we’ve got our soccer mom van waiting.  The Director and our Squad Leader proper--First Class Mado--want to meet everybody as a squad.”

“Got it!”  Shirazu grinned and nodded,  “You two go get the others!  I’ll be waiting out in the hall.”

“Mutsuki?”  Haise asked.  Upon getting Hide’s confirming nod, Haise knocked on the door, before walking in.

“Hello there,”  Haise said calmly, smiling at the young man,  “I like your eyepatch.”  Haise indicated Mutsuki’s right eye,  “I’m Rank One Sasaki Haise.  This is Rank One Washuu Hideyoshi.  We’re to be your mentors for the Quinx Project.  You’ve been released from the hospital, and we’re just waiting for everybody to pack up.”

Mutsuki studied them both for a moment, before he said shyly,  “Ah--yes sir!  I can do that.  I’ll be ready in just a moment, then.”

“I’m glad to hear that,”  Haise said,  “We’ll be getting your last squadmate.”

And with that, they ducked over to Yonebayashi’s room, knocking on the door and inviting themselves in.

The young girl didn’t look up from her video game, the eyepatch that was intended to conceal the kakugan on her right side pushed up.

“Miss?”  Haise asked softly,  “Yonebayashi Saiko?”

“Hm?”  She asked, not looking up,  “Yes, that’s me.”

“I’m Rank One Sasaki and this is Rank One Washuu,”  Haise said,  “We’re your mentors for the Quinx Squad.”

“Oh!  They said you’d be coming today,”  Saiko looked up properly,  “Are we going?”

“Yes,”  Haise replied,  “as soon as you have your things packed.  We’re just waiting for everyone to pack.”

“Got it,”  Saiko promptly looked back down at her game,  “I just need to finish this level!”

Hide exchanged a glance with Haise, before he sighed,  “Can you pause it?  I don’t mean to rush you, but we were supposed to be in the Director’s office now about ten minutes ago…”

Saiko sighed heavily,  “No, I cannot pause.  This is the boss battle.”

Hide felt his eye twitch.  “You can put your DS in sleep mode.”

“But still!”  Saiko replied,  “It shouldn’t take me any longer than five minutes.”

Hide sighed, but put a smile on his face,  “Alright then.  Five minutes.”

It took much longer than five minutes to get the four children out.  Hide was sure they made a great scene, but they were all in the van (that Hide had dubbed Haise’s mom van) with the Quinx’s belongings in the trunk, and Hide was turned around in the passenger’s seat, talking to them all quite eagerly.

“We’ll be meeting with Director Washuu,”  Hide said,  “I’m sure you’ve all met him before you went in for surgery, but now we’re going to be having proper discussions about it.  We’ll also be meeting with Mado Squad’s leader, First Class Mado Akira; the Quinx Squad is under her squad, which composes of her, Haise, and myself.  We’ll probably also be stopping for ice cream.”

There was no laughter.

“Yeesh, tough crowd,”  Hide sucked some air through his teeth,  “Anyways, once we get the information proper on the project for everyone, we’re going to be going to where we’re going to be staying; I’m sure you were all told we’d be living together.  However, this isn’t a dorm; you’ll each have your own room.  We’re gonna be roommates.  Haise and I have already been living together for a bit, so we’re gonna give you the grand tour before we teach you all how to summon your new organ.”

There was still no laughter.  Hide found himself sweating nervously.  Urie mostly had an unimpressed expression, Shirazu looked like he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be laughing, Mutsuki looked terrified, and Saiko…  Was playing her game again.

Tough crowd.

“Rank One Washuu…”  Mutsuki began nervously,  “What exactly will we be discussing?”

“Parameters of the squad,”  Haise said, cutting over what would have been more of Hide jesting,  “The Director is a fair man, Mutsuki.  We’re going to focus on training all of you before we start throwing anybody into combat.  Although you’ve all had academy training, being a Quinx, as Hide can tell you, changes what you already know how to do.  In addition, you’ll most likely be given quinque based on your capabilities.”

“When does training start?”  A question from Urie now.

“Ideally, we’d like to begin tomorrow,”  Haise replied,  “Give you all a night to settle into our living quarters, and then begin in the morning.  Hide will be training you all in combat with using your kagune, and helping you gain control over it before you go into the battlefield.  He’s been a Quinx for about two years, though your surgeries were much more refined than his.  We’ll all be able to train together with quinques; you all should have some basic practise already, but training with proper investigators is different than training with other students.”

“Ideally we want to move to case work as quickly as possible,”  Hide added in, adopting a more sober tone,  “the purpose of our squad is to raise a new level of investigators.  I’ve found that on-the-job training works the best, but understanding now your new capabilities will be able to help you much better than anything else so far.”

“Well, here we are,”  Haise replied,  “Everybody get out; I’m going to go park.  Hide--”

“Yeah, yeah,”  Hide nodded,  “I’ll apologise to the Director.  Combination of bad traffic and uninformed hospital leads to people not being here when we should have been.”

“Thank you,”  Haise smiled then.

Hide nodded and climbed out, beginning to lead the Quinx inside.  “Right--I know we should head up right away but…”  He looked over each of the Quinx, sighing a bit,  “Let’s get you guys to a locker room, first.  There’s some spare clothes in them that anybody can borrow--you four get cleaned up, put on one of the coats in there.  You’ll have to return them, but we’ve got some people in jeans and t-shirts, and some people in sweat pants.  No point in hurting your first impression.  We’ll all go up together once you’re changed.”

“Is all this really necessary, sir?”  Shirazu asked then, still following Hide’s lead.

“Of course it is,”  said Urie, slightly irritated at the question,  “you may be content looking like a punk in front of the man who’s going to decide our future, but I’m most certainly not.”

“The ladies’ room is here,”  Hide replied, stopping and gesturing for Saiko,  “The men’s is over here.  Go get changed.  I’ll be right out here.”

The four nodded and quickly vanished to go do so.  Hide sighed softly and leaned against the wall, promptly shooting a text to Haise:  ‘made the kids go change.  street clothes are p bad.  ˁ˙˟˙ˀ’

‘Alright.  I’ll be over.  Coming in right now.’  Haise sent back.

Hide smiled, waving as Mutsuki walked out.  “Not bad.  Slacks and a sweater and the coat look good on you, Mutsuki.  Haise should be over in a moment…”

As Hide said so, Haise ran over, and the Quinx came out of the changing rooms.

“Shall we get going?  This way, little ducklings,”  Hide smiled, before heading off to the Director’s office in a familiar walk.

“Sorry we’re so late!”  Hide called when he opened the door without thinking,  “Traffic and incorrect information, you know?  We do apologise for our lateness, sir.”

Hide promptly bowed as well, and Haise did, somewhat sheepish.

“It’s fine,”  Yoshitoki said,  “After all, if there had been trouble, you would have called.  Come in, all six of you.  I believe now is a moment for formal introductions?”

Hide looked around then, swallowing uncomfortably.  For a moment, he had really, really hoped that Arima wouldn’t have been there; after all, he hadn’t been involved at all in the selection process, and frankly, Hide didn’t trust the sort of relationship he seemed to hold with Haise.

Kaneki’s parental figures were never a good sort of people, and Hide didn’t trust Garden projects any further than he could throw them.  Before he became a Quinx.

“Ah, yes sir,”  Hide said, gesturing for the Quinx to sit down,  “Everybody, this is Director Washuu Yoshitoki.  Over here is Mado Squad Leader, First Class Mado Akira, and to her left is Special Class Arima Kishou.  You know myself and Rank One Sasaki,”  then Hide turned and said formally,  “Special Class, First Class, Director, these are Rank Threes Urie Kuki, Shirazu Ginshi, Mutsuki Tooru, and Yonebayashi Saiko.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you all, now that you’re in the Quinx Squad,”  Yoshitoki began,  “Thank you, for joining.  As I’m sure you all would like to know, the purpose of our squad here is to surpass the current levels of our investigators we have, in order to defeat the growing problem of the Aogiri Tree.”

“However,”  Yoshitoki continued on,  “any member of the Quinx needs to understand--should they rampage with their kagune, they will be treated as a ghoul, and exterminated.  These are the current conditions of the Quinx prior to your joining, and these are the conditions now.  We do not intend on allowing any risk of anybody becoming the kind of monster that would attract Aogiri’s attention.”

Hide didn’t need any enhanced ghoul senses to feel the way his mentees all subtly looked at Arima.  Arima himself said nothing, though that only seemed to enhance the anxious tension that filled the room.  Hide himself dry-swallowed; although the reminder that any one of the six people who couldn’t claim to be entirely human anymore would be killed if they rampaged wasn’t exactly a new one, sitting in the same room as the investigator who could go toe-to-toe with the One-Eyed Owl and walk out alive and intact (the same investigator who nearly killed Kaneki) was terrifying.

The conversation went on for a while longer, however eventually they were dismissed, and the Quinx were given permission to leave to go to the lab to get their new Quinques.

Meeting Yoshiko once more was like meeting an old friend, even as she assigned the Quinx their quinques--Shirazu and Urie both receiving Tsunagi <plain>, a C-rated mass-produced bikaku quinque, modeled after a long sword, with no hand guard, ending in an unadorned handle.  Mutsuki claimed Ifraft and Abksol, a pair of B-rated rinkaku quinque that took the form of a pair of sharp knives.  Saiko received Bokusatsu No. 2, a B-rated koukaku quinque in the form of a large, heavy hammer.

Hide couldn’t help but feel as if these weapons were vested by someone with a sense of irony.

“Ahhh, thank you, Yoshiko!”  Hide said, smiling at the wonderful scientist who was still there--and still as grumpy as she was the first time Hide received his quinque.

“I don’t want to see any of you back here anytime soon,”  Yoshiko responded,  “I know that the Tsunagi models are mass-produced, but that’s no excuse for them to break.  And those cases aren’t easy to make either, so don’t think just because you have the quinque out that it’s alright to let the case break and go from there.”

“You hear the lady?”  Hide asked, looking over at the Quinx squad,  “You don’t want to have to come down to Yoshiko or Chigyo for repairs; Yoshiko will fight you.  Just take you out front and beat you up.”

There was a bit of forced laughter from Shirazu, and Hide sighed once more.  “C’mon kids.  Let’s go home.”

* * *

 

Taking them inside the place Haise and Hide had come to dub as the Chateau was an experience all of its own.  There was some audible noise from the squad, and Hide grinned a bit at it.

“Welcome,”  Hide said, stretching his arms out,  “to the Chateau.  It's our living quarters-slash-training area. We’re going to try and have everyone be up by seven thirty; we’ve plenty of long days ahead of us, and we need to get used to the schedule as soon as possible.”

“The first floor is purely training facilities,”  Haise said as he led everybody in,  “You’ll become familiar with them all soon enough.  The upper two floors are our living space.  The second floor is the kitchen, dining room, living room, any spare rooms for the guests we may or may not eventually end up keeping here.”

They made it onto the second floor then, and Haise continued to speak.  “The third floor is private rooms.  There’s plenty for everyone to choose from--there’s a bathroom for two rooms, so you may end up sharing.  You can take your pick of which room you want, sans the two on the end of the left hallway’s right side.--those are mine and Hide’s.”

“Staircase is up there,”  Hide indicated,  “go ahead up and unpack, and we’ll get dinner later?  Haise’s a _phenomenal_ cook, which is great, because I can’t cook at all, beyond stereotypical poor college kid food.”

“I’m so glad you volunteered me,”  Haise said sarcastically, wrapping his arm around Hide and beginning to give him a noogie,  “This means, of course, you’re going to be learning how to help me cook dinner _every_ night until you can do it on your own.  And _then_ you’ll be making dinners for us, Hide.”

Hide made a yelping sound, before he gestured to the Quinx,  “Go.  Go find rooms.  We’ll both be down here, I promise.”

With that, the Quinx scattered to the upstairs, the four of them venturing into the upstairs floor, and Hide and Haise found chairs to sit in, relaxing.

“Jeez…”  Hide laughed,  “I thought today would never be over.”

“You’re telling me,”  Haise agreed,  “And we’ve still got dinner to go through, really…  And then tomorrow, and--”

“One day at a time?”  Hide suggested then, pulling the ponytail out of his hair.  He ran his hands through it, murmuring,  “Stressing out over tomorrow doesn’t help us get to know the kids now.”

“I suppose you’re right,”  Haise replied,  “It’s just weird to think about; it doesn’t feel like that long ago at all I thought…”

“Yeah,”  Hide replied,  “but now there’s more.  We’re not alone anymore; there’s more hybrids in the world.”  Hide sighed then, running his hands through his hair once more.

“Who knows if that’s a good thing, though.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Though time is commonly fast-forwarded in small amounts, timeskips usually refer to periods of several years or decades, wherein a pronounced change can be measured against the same characters, such as a child becoming an adult.


	7. Act 2, Scene 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to Droory for being my #baseball partner and helping me change major parts of :re to make it work
> 
> Alternatively, In Medias Res

Kagune incoming.  Unidentified screaming.  Blades swished through the air, the fleshy, meaty sound of a sharp object slicing through the kagune being the first thing properly processed.

Haise landed in front of the Quinx.  A protective stance was taken as the offending kagune split harmlessly onto either side of the Quinx.  Hide landed next to Haise, and their gazes locked with  a raw, angered fury, before they both nodded.  This was simple enough, it seemed--Serpent  _ was _ a S-rate for a reason, and he was attacking the Quinx.  Cut and dry, open and close case.

Haise darted left, Hide right.  This tactic was practically habit; quinques out and armed, the pair acting as pincers, one distracts the opponent while one moves to flank.

“Who’re you?”  Serpent drawled, pulling his long, bikaku kagune back to him,  “The King of Fakes…?”

“Don’t,”  Haise gritted his teeth, charging forward,  “touch my squad!”

Haise spun, swinging Yukimura ⅓ in to slice through Serpent.

“Just shut up!”  Serpent snarled, ducking down, before he promptly kicked Haise, sending Haise catapulting backwards.

“No,”  Hide snarled as Haise gagged on his own blood behind. The vibrations of Screeching Ghost carried along and through Hide's arms, its trademark sound building as the blade swung downward before ending with the satisfying squelch as it collided with Serpent's flesh.

“You don’t touch our squad,”  Hide ordered.

“Mutsuki,”  Haise barely looked at the Quinx when he stood,  “contact Akira.”

A crack, the oh-so-familiar crack of a finger, caught Hide's attention as he jerked back and away from Serpent, mind alive with concerns for his partner.  Haise was wound like a spring, and as Hide turned back to look at Haise, Haise’s kagune unfurled.

“Kagune…”  Mutsuki whispered fearfully as he pulled out his phone, dialing Akira’s number.

Hide redirected his attention back to Serpent.  Serpent merely cocked his head appraisingly, gesturing for Haise and Hide to attack once again.

“Baseball?”  Hide offered, clenching his quinque.

“Baseball.”  Haise dashed forward, his kagune forming akin to a claw-like hand.

Hide grinned and sprinted up, swinging Screeching Ghost in, his whole body behind the attack.  Slam.  The blade smashed into Serpent's back, throwing the ghoul forward.  Haise's kagune caught around Serpent's own, tightening and pulling at the mass of flesh before tearing it from him, the ghoul crashing to the ground as his bikaku was torn from his back.

_ It’ll be back, _  Hide thought grimly, watching it begin to reform as quickly as Haise had shattered it.  Teeth grit as Hide watched Haise dodge past Serpent’s kagune jabbing at him.  Within the span of eyeblinks, Serpent was right up in Haise’s face, kicking Haise backwards.  Haise was sent flying.

Haise landed delicately as his kagune grabbed Yukimura ⅓.  He held a hand out, the kagune returning quinque, before he swung back in, his body spinning from the momentum.

Hide jumped forward, his kagune emerging.  The massive tail pushed Hide up and off the ground, giving enough air for Hide to slam Screeching Ghost down on Serpent.

Before Hide or Haise could connect, Serpent arced his kagune up and around in one wide blast, smacking Hide and Haise around.  The momentum from the kagune’s blow sent Hide backwards, causing him to collide with the Quinx.

Haise wasn’t as lucky.  Serpent focused his attention on Haise, and Serpent’s kagune narrowed itself, stabbing into Haise repeatedly.  Haise howled in pain, his body being torn at.

“Take.  That”  Serpent grunted from the effort, each word punctuating another stab.  Haise was violently pulled down a kick colliding with enough force to drive through his body and launch him back at the growing pile of Quinx.

“That’s all?”  Serpent taunted when Haise didn’t stand back up.

“Haise!”  Hide screeched.

No, no--not again.  Hide couldn’t lose Haise again.  Once (more than once, Hide’s brain whispered, though he chose to ignore it) was more than enough.

Hide stood.  He took a moment to balance himself, before he adjusted his grip on Screeching Ghost, and charged forward with little regard to his own safety.

“Stand back,”  Hide heard Haise order.  Relief settled in Hide’s bones, for that meant Haise had recovered, and his blow became sloppy, easily deflected, and Hide was thrown back to Haise and the Quinx.

“We can still fight!”  Mutsuki protested, drawing his own quinque,  “We can’t just stand here and watch--”

“Rank Three Mutsuki,”  Haise looked with a tense, ordering smile,  “This is an order from your superior.”

“Tooru!”  Shirazu snapped, pulling Mutsuki back,  “Don’t get in their way!”

“Alright,”  Haise sneered cockily, cracking his knuckles outwards and stretching,  “You won’t get past here, Serpent.”

“Yeah,”  Serpent agreed,  “compared to those brats…  I’m much more interested in  _ you _ .”

“Sorry,”  Hide quipped, moving next to Haise.  Haise shot Hide a look Hide countered, daring Haise to protest Hide being at his side,  “But I can’t help but wonder if we should be  _ happy _ about that.  I think it’s better if you don’t know about him, right?”

Haise cracked his knuckle once more, his kakugan activating as a manic look spread on his face.  Before a plan of attack could be issued, Haise charged in recklessly, his kagune forming a spiral-shaped, koukaku-like sword.

Serpent barely dodged the blow, unprepared for a part of Haise’s kagune to emerge from under the ground, pinning Serpent in mid-air.

“Haise!”  Hide bellowed, trying to get Haise’s attention as Hide dashed over,  “Let’s make this quick, yeah?”

It was as if Haise never heard Hide.  An uncountable amount of other tendrils of Haise’s kagune slammed into and through Serpent’s body in a sadistic parallel of what Serpent had done to Haise.

“That’s payback,”  Haise snarled out mockingly, before he threw Serpent back, stepping to, and then standing over Serpent menacingly.  Haise retreated most of his kagune; he didn’t need more than two tendrils to finish the job.

Hide looked back at the Quinx, taking it as a mixed blessing that backup finally arrived.  But now, Hide could hear the conversation, and he swallowed.

“Aargh…”  Serpent gasped out, a hand covering the hole in his gut,  “‘I’ll die, I’ll die’ was it..?”

_ No, please… _

Hide tried to pretend he wasn’t looking at Nishio Nishiki’s face.  It didn’t work. So instead, Hide hissed out softly,  “ _ Shut up _ .”

Nishiki, like Haise, blatantly ignored Hide in favor of Haise, continuing on with his train of thought;  ”For real…  You…  No matter where you go, you’re helpless…  Kaneki.”

With the shaky whisper of the name that had once belonged to the man standing over Nishiki, Haise stilled.  Haise’s kakugan and kagune vanished entirely as he whispered,  “Nishio…?”

Hide tried to jerk Haise away.  “Haise--Haise, come on.  The ghoul’s just messing with you.  Go back to the Quinx and I’ll finish the job--”

Haise screeched as he wrenched away from Hide.

Nishiki stood, covering his face up with his mask.  “‘Finish the job?’”  He echoed and shook his head,  “I’m sorry…”  

Nishiki jumped up and was gone.

Haise fell on his knees.  His screeches continued as his kagune emerged, thrashing around at some invisible foe only Haise could see.

The sounds of First Class Hirako’s squad approaching pushed Hide into overdrive.

_ A precipice in front, and the wolves behind,  _  Hide thought grimly.  Let Serpent escape and stop Haise before he needed to be put down, or stop Serpent and let Hirako put Haise down.

No choice.  Never a choice.

“Haise,”  Hide said, gently grasping Haise,  “Haise, c’mon, buddy, I need you to calm down.  First Class Hirako’s here.  Nobody wants to hurt you.”

Haise groaned, shoving Hide away as he curled up a bit, his kagune thrashing around.  Hirako issued orders to take down Haise, and Hide felt his brain metaphorically dump gasoline onto itself and pull out a lighter.

“Haise,”  Hide heard his voice raise in hysterics,  “Haise can you tell me who I am?  I need you to talk to me, buddy.  You’re not in danger.  The kids are safe.  We are all safe.”

Hide managed to grip Haise’s shirt, doing his best to not rattle Haise as he heard himself still yelling,  “What is your name?  Who are you?”

There was no response.  Hide felt himself get pulled away by Hirako as Kuramoto and Takeomi severed Haise’s kagune from his body.  A bullet shot cleanly, embedding itself inside of Haise, who fell as the bullet entered his body.

Hide had become used to compartmentalising.  This wasn’t something so easily compartmentalised.  Hide’s quinque had fallen to the ground, his kagune dissipated, and he yanked himself from Hirako’s grasp.  Hide sprinted to Haise, wrapping his arms around the fallen man protectively.

Hide’s kagune almost emerged as he looked at everybody, trying to make sense of the scene.  But that was Akira walking towards them, and Hide merely clung to Haise, whispering to him,  “Hey.  She wants to talk to you.”

“Try…”  Akira sighed softly, looking down at Haise,  “Try thinking through your situation slowly.”

“I am…”  Haise gasped out, lolling his head to look at everybody standing around him,  “I am…  A ghoul investigator.  Under Mado Squad.  Investigating Torso as the mentor of the Quinx…”

“Who are you?”  Akira asked.

“I am Sasaki Haise,”  Haise groaned in pain.

“That’s right,”  Akira confirmed,  “You’re Sasaki Haise.”

“Akira…”  Haise muttered,  “I am…”  _ So sorry. _

“It’s okay.”  Akira crouched down and ran a hand through Haise’s hair,  “Nobody died.  Don’t overdo it so much, Haise.  It’s an order from your superior.”

Hide swallowed, before he looked at the Quinx, biting his lip.  “We have some explaining to give you.”

* * *

“I’m sure you know what ghouls can do,”  Hide began his lecture, in a time before the Quinx began fieldwork,  “anybody want to volunteer information?”

Hide told the Quinx to dress for a morning of training.  Sweatpants, comfortable shirts--they’d be in for a long day of combat training.

“Ghouls have kagune,”  Urie began,  “a predatory organ that functions as a weapon.  Ghouls are also four to seven times stronger than the average human being, and can use their bare hands to penetrate a human’s body.  They’re capable of jumping several metres high.  Their bodies are resistant to most injuries, except for those caused by kagune or quinque, or other circumstances, such as falling from an extreme height.”

“Thank you, Urie,”  Hide nodded,  “Anybody else?”

“Ghouls have superior senses,”  Mutsuki added,  “they can smell people and meat from distances, and can tell individual scents apart.  They also have extremely heightened hearing, and can discern footsteps from great distances.”

“They have kakugan!”  Shirazu jumped in, now that everyone was talking,  “Two of ‘em, unlike us.  And they have amazing regenerative abilities; most wounds heal in seconds to days.  Even the worst wounds heal, unless it’s a major one from a kagune or quinque, like being stabbed through a kakuhou.  But some ghouls are better at it than others.”

“Saiko,”  Hide nodded to the last member of the squad,  “Why are ghouls vulnerable to quinque and q bullets?”

“Ah…”  Saiko bit her lip, rocking back and forth for a moment,  “because they’re made from kakuhou and a special kind of steel that can penetrate ghoul skin.  Ghouls are also weakened from RC Suppressants and if they eat human food.”

“Why is this relevant?”  Urie interrupted.

Hide resisted the urge to roll his eyes,  “We’re not ghouls,”  he began,  “but it’s a good idea to understand them, because we’re not only humans with built-in quinque, but we have some of the other applications of ghouls--our senses are better than normal humans.  We heal faster than normal humans.”

“So like,”  Shirazu asked then,  “are ya saying we could regrow limbs?”

“Yeah,”  Hide shrugged,  “with enough RC cells and determination.  I had to cut my leg off once because I was stuck in a bear trap and let it regrow.  You can ask Special Class Houji, actually--”

Hide’s lips moved, but no sounds came out.  The pain of being stabbed in the back erupted from him, and Hide gasped for air, looking at the blade that had aggressively plunged through ribs and diaphragm.  Hide stared still at Yukimura ⅓’s blade, knowing Haise was behind him.  The quinque twisted and was torn out quickly.

Hide dropped to his knees, gagging as he tried to cover the wound.

“Oh my god!”  Mutsuki yelled, covering up his mouth.

“What the hell, Sasaki?!”  Shirazu yelled, before he groaned, watching Mutsuki bend over and vomit.

“Is he going to be okay?”  Saiko asked.

“I’m fine,”  Hide responded, holding an arm out.  Haise grabbed a hold of the arm, and Hide stood, wincing at the hole in his shirt,  “Jeez, buddy…  You hit a rib.”

“Sorry,”  Haise smiled awkwardly, looking at the shocked looks of the four Quinx,  “I was trying to make sure nobody saw me.”

Hide covered the hole in his body more, feeling his organs begin to knit themselves together.  “As you can see,”  he said calmly,  “we can heal from even the worst of things.  Eventually.  I’ve more RC cells than you guys, so it’s easier for me.  Though really--try to not lose any limbs.  Speaking from experience, losing those is  _ exhausting _ at best, and can still be fatal if you’re blowing off your RC cells willy-nilly.”

“Ah…  Mutsuki,”  Haise said softly, smiling awkwardly as he moved his quinque out of sight,  “go clean yourself up.  I’ll clean up the mess, okay?  I’m so sorry for startling you.”

Mutsuki nodded and ducked out of the room.

“So when Mutsuki comes back,”  Hide clapped his hands together,  “we’re going to work on summoning your kagune.  I don’t expect it on try one; as far as we learnt from studying me, we know that kagune more often emerge when your life's in danger.”

* * *

“Another victim missing their upper body…”

Tagami Park, Tokyo.  11:47 PM.

“Work of a ghoul,”  First Class Shimoguchi Nobu confirmed, looking at the corpse in the trunk.  He turned back to the police officer who had called in the corpse,  “Looks like Torso’s, to be specific.  You were right in calling us.”

Shimoguchi turned back to his squad, barking out,  “Hurry up and identify the victim!”

* * *

“Shirazu and our squad leader should be doing solo investigations right now,”  Mutsuki said to Hide as they both walked down the hall of the CCG’s headquarters.  “Saiko’s probably oversleeping again…  Even though the doctor told us to work with everyone…”

“Shiba thinks it’s easy,”  Hide rolled his eyes as he looked at Mutsuki,  “How do you feel?”

“Fine--”  Mutsuki cut off, letting out a sound of startled pain.  Mutsuki and Hide both looked up at the members of the squad they had quite literally run into.

“I-I’m sorry!”  Mutsuki squeaked and bowed, before he began to run off.

Hide nodded his head for a moment, before he took off after Mutsuki.

“Seems like they’re from the new unit,”  one of the squad members said.

Hide stilled.  Mutsuki swallowed and grabbed Hide’s arm.  “Hide…  Please don’t make a scene.”

Hide deflated.  Well, he tried.  It took a few mental iterations of ‘Matsuri would be a dick about it, don’t be a dick about it.’

“What a  _ pushover. _ ”  Hide heard the same squad member continue.

Hide took the lead away from Hirako squad.  He could hear Kuramoto scolding them, and Hide did his best to not say anything.

And then one of them called the Quinx squad embarrassments.  Hide bit his lip, letting the retorts die inside his mouth.  Instead of letting the acid spew, Hide plastered a smile on that would make anyone who lived by stabbing others unexpectedly proud.

They called Akira an embarrassment.  And Hide kept walking.  Wishing he could make these people realise there were consequences for their words, Hide felt Mutsuki still try to pull him away.

“They’ve nothing to show for it,”  One of them continued on,  “Really, I’m pretty sure it’s just an excuse on the Director’s part to try and justify letting a crazy doctor turn his son into a monster.”

“You’re Hirako Squad, right?”  Hide chirped then, watching the squad stop.  Hide felt a sick sort of pleasure, knowing he shouldn’t delight in making people squirm.

Hide tugged his arm away from Mutsuki and strolled right back to the squad.  “I’m sorry; I’ve only ever read your reports, so I may be mistaking you for someone a little more…  Competent.  I’m Rank One Washuu.  I believe you had something you wanted to say to my face?”

“After all,”  Hide drawled out then, watching their faces as Hide stood comfortably, not willing to back down,  “What was it you called us?  An excuse on the Director’s part to justify turning me into a monster?”

“You heard me right,”  the investigator who had said so snarled out,  “You’re nothing more than the director’s half-breed monster son.  You and that girl over there would be better serving the CCG as a pair of quinque--”

Punching someone in the face and breaking their jaw made a satisfying, crunch sound.  Hide could smell the blood when it hit his nose, and he grinned.  It smelt  _ delicious. _

“Go ahead,”  Hide said viciously,  “Say that to my face again.  This  _ half-breed _ would have no problem dragging you outside and finishing you myself.”

There was no response.  Hide could feel eyes on him, watching to see what his next move would be.

Hide didn’t take one.  He couldn’t.  Personally, Hide was sure he had made his point clear, and turned around, beginning to say,  “Mutsuki, let’s go--”

Hide was tackled to the ground.  His head slammed into the ground, and he felt an arm get yanked on.

There were three guys on Hide, and Hide struggled to get out from under them.  He could hear Kuramoto barking for Kuroiwa and Mutsuki to run and get help, but Hide paid more attention to the nearest person to him.

Hide jerked his elbow back, feeling it collide with somebody, and promptly bit down on the hand that was going for his eyes.

Hide heard the person it was attached to yell,  “It’s biting me!”

That, frankly, motivated Hide to bite down harder.  He managed to kick out, and let go of everyone, rolling out and away.

Hide tightened up his form, beginning the battle math.  Three opponents.  Kuramoto hollering for them to not draw quinque.  Right.  Middle guy, take him down, spin around and grab another before they could flank.  Kagune may be needed.

“ _ Enough _ .”

The four combatants stilled, looking over to see Mutsuki and Kuroiwa returning with help.

Very specific help, it seemed--Haise, Matsuri, and Houji.

“What do you four think you’re doing?”  Houji continued angrily.

Nobody spoke up at first, before Hide slunk over shamefully, keeping his gaze on the ground.  “We had a political disagreement.”

“Funny,”  Matsuri said in a way that said no, he did not find this funny at all,  “Rank Three Mutsuki told me you decided that you felt like causing a fight with another squad.”

“Political disagreement,”  Hide repeated,  “some people here feel that my squad is a mistake the Director made to justify making half-ghouls.  I’m not fond of being called a half-breed monster, nor allowing people to misgender and insult my squadmates.”

“Associate Special Class Washuu,”  Haise said then,  “Perhaps this should be handled with our respective squad leaders--”

“We handle it  _ now _ ,”  Matsuri replied, looking at the men in the room.  “I expect fighting from children, not from grown investigators.”

“And  _ you _ ,”  Matsuri turned his gaze onto Hide,  “You, of all people, should know better.”

“I’m sorry,”  Hide snapped,  “Should I have  _ let _ them insult me, Mutsuki, and the Director?”

"You should have acted as representative of your rank, squad, and family, not brash impulses resulting in violence."  Matsuri said flatly.

“Fine,”  Hide said coldly, feeling his fists clench once more,  “I understand.  Should you  _ need _ me, I have places to be.”

He tried to walk away, but Matsuri grabbed Hide’s arm.  Hide reacted automatically, spinning and throwing another punch.

Thankfully, before Hide could do something else he would inevitably regret, Houji grabbed Hide’s fist, pulling Hide away.  Hide felt Houji’s hands rest on either shoulder, gripping them tightly.

“Perhaps  _ I _ should handle this,”  Houji said,  “You’re a busy man.  I’ve nothing to do.”

Matsuri gave an annoyed glare, but consented.  “Fine.”

Houji looked over at Hirako squad,  “I don’t want any of you to move, except for Kuroiwa, who’s getting your squad leader.  Are we understood?”

Once it was clear they understood, Houji led the Quinx away.  Once they were out of earshot, he turned on Hide, demanding,  “What were you  _ thinking _ ?  Do you  _ want _ to find yourself in Cochlea?”

Hide frowned a bit, before he said,  “It was that, or let them keep going.  I…  I couldn’t just let them sit there and say that.  I wasn’t expecting them all to jump me.”

Houji frowned more.  “That’s the most feeble excuse I think I’ve heard you say, and I’ve had the pleasure of hearing  _ many _ feeble excuses come out of your mouth.”

Hide looked down, whispering softly,  “I’m not exaggerating when I say they called us half-breed monsters.”

“I don’t  _ care _ ,”  Houji said flatly,  “you can’t give them any reasons.  You know that as well as I do.”

“Am I done being treated like I’m a six year old?”  Hide replied,  “Because you’ve got three more people’s asses that deserve to be chewed as hard as everyone wants mine.”

Houji sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I’ll talk to Akira about it,”  Haise said then,  “I need to take my squad and get going.”

Houji looked as if he sorely wanted to yell at Hide some more, but he nodded, giving Haise permission to take Hide and go.

And Haise did.  Hide was sure Haise would yell at him, but instead Haise asked a question.   


“Did you two go see Dr. Shiba?”

“Yes sir,”  Mutsuki nodded,  “It seems I had anemia again…”

Hide felt his lips smile awkwardly, before he said,  “And Shiba confirmed what you and I were both pretty sure of--it isn’t your cooking; unless my RC levels drop, I’m probably never going to be able to eat anything other than vegan diet and RC supplements.  I miss animal products already…  He says it’s because how animals and humans have different ways RC cells are made, and they’re not compatible.  Also says it shouldn’t be a problem with the other Qs, unless they hit their frame limit.”

“Well, that’s a mixed blessing,”  Haise sighed softly, shaking his head,  “Alright then!  Can I have an update on the current investigation?”

“Oh, yes sir!”  Mutsuki nodded,  “The neighborhood’s been hearing animal-like growls.  One woman was worried, and reported that it might be a ghoul, but…  Rank Three Yonebayashi and I went and conducted a search around the area, and we found a dog that had established its territory within the neighborhood.  We established that it was the sounds the woman heard.  After she was informed, she was extremely relieved, and said she’d be able to sleep soundly.”

Sasaki crossed his arms and nodded,  “I see, I see…  And what about the others?”

“Squad Leader Urie and Rank Three Shirazu are doing independent missions,”  Hide said flatly,  “They’re looking into  _ Torso _ .  But Torso’s at least a Rank A ghoul, and isn’t someone they can handle by themselves…  Mutsuki hasn’t been able to contact them.”

“Let’s get the investigation data on Torso from the team working on the case,”  Haise ordered, dashing back inside the building.  Hide and Mutsuki took off after him.

“Those idiots…”  Haise mumbled, before he looked over at Hide and Mutsuki,  “Where’s Saiko today?”

“I called out to her when I was leaving, but seemed like she was up late yesterday…”  Mutsuki murmured reluctantly.

“I see…”  Haise groaned.  “I’ll scold her when we get back.”

* * *

“The data?”  Shimoguchi asked the present Quinx squad, once the three had finally tracked him down.  “But you’re not assigned to Torso, are you?  I get that you’re all desperate to get a lead on Hirako squad, but that doesn’t mean you can take our job.”

“It’s dangerous for the newbie team to face Torso,”  Haise pleaded,  “and if we don’t get a head start over my subordinates…”

“You make it sound like your missing Rank Threes are going to find Torso,”  Shimoguchi sneered.

“But--”  Hide cut across.

“You two are the senior members of the squad,”  Shimoguchi pointed out,  “This is happening because one of you can’t keep the other under control, never mind handling your subordinates.  You’re using  _ that _ as an excuse to demand our research data?  Isn’t that a bit tyrannical of you?”

“I agree with you,”  Haise said, looking at the ground,  “that I--that  _ we’ve _ been incompetent with controlling them, and I do acknowledge that our request to look at the important data is tyrannical,  _ but _ …”  Haise bowed then, pleading,  “I don’t want my subordinates to be endangered due to my incompetence!  If we make any progress at all, we’ll report them over to you, as long as we receive the data…”

Shimoguchi sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.  “Do you  _ really _ think this matter will be solved with a bow?  Are you  _ really _ fit to be ghoul investigators, the way you act?  I’ve heard plenty about you all…  And especially about you two.  When I’m faced with people like you, it  _ really _ puts me on the spot.”

Shimoguchi began to walk away.  “My squad and I have our own investigation, so we’ll take our leave.”

Haise fell to his knees.  “That was so lame of me,”  he groaned,  “I tried to look good by losing my pride, but I was still rejected…”

“Sir, it’s fine,”  Mutsuki said as he crouched down next to Haise.  “Besides!  Didn’t you say we’re supposed to update progress reports?  The Torso case should be in the main office!  I’m sure we can find it there.”

Haise nodded after a moment, half-hugging Mutsuki,  “You’re right!  Come on, let’s go!”

* * *

Shirazu and Urie were distracted.  They hadn’t noticed the ghoul getting up once more to attack them; they were open and vulnerable as they argued loudly enough for the neighborhood block to hear them.

It took Haise landing blade-down on the ghoul and snapping for them to not let their guard down for Shirazu and Urie to notice.  Shirazu paled, his eyes widening, and Urie jumped slightly as Hide and Mutsuki made themselves visible at the same time.

“I’m finishing him,”  Urie said coldly, trying to sound as if he wanted them to argue.

“Don’t.”  Haise ordered, turning his head to look at his subordinates.  “Remember clause two?  ‘Do not harm more than needed’.”

“Besides,”  Hide added,  “We might be able to get useful information out of him.  And more importantly, we’ve told you not to act so independently!”

“But we’re investigating together!”  Shirazu protested as Urie audibly agreed.

“Don’t bullshit me,”  Hide frowned,  “Shirazu, I can smell the blood.  You’re hurt.”

“We achieved a result in the end,”  Urie snapped to Hide, before Urie put his headphones on,  “Besides, Shirazu regenerates quickly.”  He redirected his gaze to Haise, snapping out,  “If you blindly follow the Thirteen Clauses, you’ll never see the end of ghouls in your lifetime.”

* * *

“It appears the ghoul that Mado Squad’s Rank Three Investigator Urie confronted  _ wasn’t _ Torso.” Akira began the meeting.  “He’s currently assigned an A Rating, but his true rating is still unknown.  It might’ve been for the best that we didn’t confront him yet.”

“At any rate,”  Shimoguchi said,  “ _ We  _ are the ones in charge of Torso, so we kindly ask you to pursue a separate investigation, Mado Squad.”

“By the way,”  another member chirped,  “I heard just yesterday that Washuu went and lost his temper.  He attacked Hirako squad…  Man, I heard he out-and-out  _ bit _ someone like the ghoul he is…”

"In my defense,”  Hide snapped, clenching his fists,  “When you're held down with your arms pinned behind your back, biting is a very legitimate means of defending yourself, ghoul or not."

Hide winced as Akira kicked him in the back of the leg, shooting him a ‘let me handle this’ look.

“From my understanding, it was three on one.  Though really, Shimoguchi’s squad being so focused on my own’s shortcomings makes me wonder why, if you’ve time to focus on  _ us _ , Torso isn’t captured yet.”

Hide snorted as he watched Shimoguchi splutter around, pointing out the Quinx had tried to take their data.  Akira had rolled her eyes, insisting they were merely trying to help.

_ Wonder what Shimoguchi tastes like?   _ Hide’s mind cooed, saccharine-sweet,   _ Oooh, he looks awful sweet!  His head could make a nice fruit salad--wait,  _ what? _  No!  I don’t want to eat him! _

“If it were Sasaki, Washuu, and me,”  Akira gloated, closing her eyes and shaking her head,  “We’d have that case solved in ten days.”

“Ten days?”  Haise whispered in shock, wincing when Hide elbowed him.

“Unfortunately,”  Akira carried on,  “we had to deal with the Aogiri Tree, and ran out of time.  And even Sasaki and the Qs could identify Torso’s face within a single month.”

“That’s the last straw…”  Shimoguchi hissed.

“Investigator Mado,  Investigator Shimoguchi,”  First Class Hirako cut across,  “Let’s stop right there.”

“As for Torso’s investigation,”  Hirako sighed,  “we’ll have the Shimoguchi and Mado squads perform a joint investigation.  Please share the investigative data.”

“Understood,”  Shimoguchi reluctantly agreed.

“We, the Hirako Squad, will continue pursuing the S~ rated ghoul, Serpent.  And that will conclude today’s meeting.”

As they began to disperse, Shimoguchi drawled out,  “Investigator Mado…  ‘Identify Torso’s face in a single month’, was it?  I’m looking forward to that.”

“Yes,”  Akira responded,  “And  _ when _ we identify it, I look forward to a pleasant partnership from then on.”

The three of them stepped outside, a heavy air over them, despite Akira’s boasts.  Hide found himself looking at the ground, before Akira promptly punched him in the arm.

“The hell were you thinking, Washuu?”  She snapped,  “Getting into a fight with Hirako squad, and then digging your own grave even further?  What next, are you going to fight the rest of the CCG the next time someone calls you a ghoul?”

Hide didn’t respond, biting his lip and looking down.  He didn’t feel like he deserved this, but sometimes it was just easier to let someone yell.

“We got the authorization from Investigator Hirako,”  Akira seemed to calm, before she turned and walked away,  “Identify Torso’s face within a month.  Let’s make Shimoguchi’s lips tremble with shame.”

“A case where Investigator Shimoguchi couldn’t find a lead for three months…”  Haise looked at Hide and sighed,  “We don’t even have enough control over the Qs…”

* * *

“Welcome home.”  Mutsuki said as Hide and Haise walked in.

“You’re alone?”  Haise asked with a frown.  “What about Urie and the rest?”

“They haven’t come back yet.”  Mutsuki sighed,  “Since the ghoul the other day wasn’t Torso, they flipped and stormed off…”

“What about Saiko?”  Hide asked.

“She was using some app until just now,”  Mutsuki mumbled and sighed,  “Umm…  ‘A game to grow a lion dance’ or something like that?  Is that even fun?”

Hide shrugged.  “Got me.”

“Mutsuki, did you eat dinner yet?”  Haise asked,  “Need me to whip something up?  I was going to make sure Hide ate something other than rice crackers and popcorn today, so it’s no big deal.”

“But aren’t you tired after just finishing work?”  Mutsuki blinked.

“It’s fine,”  Haise laughed,  “I want to make something.”

“Then let us both help!”  Mutsuki said and began to move over.

“Mutsuki, you need to bulk up,”  Haise smiled as both Mutsuki and Hide came over,  “So you’re eating meat.”

“Ah!  I don’t like meat with blood dripping from it…”  Mutsuki mumbled.

“Don’t complain to your superior.”  Haise teased.

“What sort of beans do I get today?”  Hide asked as he pulled out two bags of rice,  “If it’s soybeans, I’m going to personally find a raw steak and put myself out of commission.”

Haise rolled his eyes,  “And I’ll tell Akira you’re giving yourself food poisoning.  But it’s adzuki beans.  And you’re both getting some fried vegetables.  I’m nice.”

“Why thank you, Haise.”  Hide drawled out, setting up the rice cooker,  “Ah--Mutsuki, can you get the vegetables?”

“Got it!”

Eventually, the three sat down for dinner, a plate in front of Hide and Mutsuki.  Hide tore into his food with a very quick ‘thank you for dinner, Haise’.

“It’s tasty!”  Mutsuki smiled.

“Thank you.”  Haise murmured.

“We’ll clean up after dinner,”  Hide said after a few bites,  “You cooked for us, so we’ll get on cleaning once we’re done.  Are you tired?  Why don’t you go lie down?”

“Hide--”

“Please!”  Mutsuki looked up,  “You worked so hard today, sir.  Let us do it for you.”

Haise sighed and nodded, heading upstairs.  “Okay.  You two get that cleaned up.”

Hide and Mutsuki nodded, and they began to clean up.

“Hey, Mutsuki?”  Hide began as he scrubbed dishes,  “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

“What’s wrong?”  Mutsuki blinked, putting the leftovers away,  “You have that pensive look on your face.  The one that says you’re far, far away from here.”

“We went over the data from Shiba.”  Hide began,  “And your levels are concerning.  You’re barely past human, and it’s not anywhere near enough to get you to an ability that will put you in fighting shape against ghouls.”

Mutsuki looked down for a moment, before he said softly,  “I don’t know how to make myself any better.”

“We can fix that,”  Hide said, pulling his hands out of the soapy water, wiping them on his work pants.

“What do you mean?”  Mutsuki looked up in confusion.

“When I was…  Starting out,”  Hide began,  “I couldn’t keep decent levels.  I crashed more than an eight year old on sugar highs.  Shiba made a supplement to keep me level.  I still crash, but that’s mostly when I’m overworked anyways.  But I still keep them around, just in case.”

Hide rinsed the dishes off.  “It’d help you.  Helps overall--makes you heal better, gets you faster, stronger…  I mean, you probably shouldn’t take them all the time; it’s meant for me, not you, but…  If you want, I’m basically condoning drug abuse.”

Mutsuki stared at Hide for a long moment, before he bit his lip.  “I don’t know…”

“Look,”  Hide said, putting his hands up,  “I don’t want to pressure you into anything you don’t want to do.  But if you change your mind, I’ve got performance enhancers.”

Before Mutsuki could respond though, Urie and Shirazu walked up the stairs, Shirazu grunting out a ‘yo.’

“Hey,”  Hide smiled,  “We’ve got leftovers, if you two are hungry.  Haise and I have news for you, once you’re both relaxed.  It’s the good kind.”

Shirazu shot Hide a wary look, before he asked,  “What’s for dinner?”

“Uh, you can have my vegan leftovers, or whatever Haise made for Mutsuki,”  Hide shrugged,  “I’m gonna go change and let Haise know you’re both home, okay?”

Urie merely headed to the kitchen, beginning to dig for said leftovers.

Hide went up the stairs, heading down to Haise’s room and knocking.  “Kids are home.”  Hide said softly.

Haise poked his head out then, smiling a bit.  “Good.  We can talk to them about the Torso case once they’re both settled.”

“Got it.  I’m gonna change if you need me.”

* * *

“‘Identify Torso’s face in a single month’?”  Shirazu asked.

“Yeah.”  Hide confirmed.

“Accomplishing in one month what the Shimoguchi Squad’s long been at a loss for…”  Haise began,  “To be honest, this might be a little tight.  But I don’t think it’s impossible, if we all work together.”

_ It’s good that there was something for the squad to focus on,  _  Hide thought,   _ It’ll give us something to work  _ together _ for. _

“If all of us in the Qs Squad combine our--”

“Tch,”  Shirazu snorted, cutting Haise off,  “Don’t act so dumb, Sassan.”

“Shirazu…?”  Haise asked.

“I’m gonna do as I like,”  Shirazu stood and began to walk away.

“Hey, wait!”  Hide snapped.

“Roger that,”  Urie sneered,  “I’ll give you Torso in a month.”

“Urie!”  Hide hollered as Urie walked off after Shirazu as well.

Haise groaned and shook his head,  “So you keep insisting on  _ solo _ investigations…  Alright…”  Haise cracked a knuckle menacingly, smiling angrily,  “Looks like I have to teach those kids what a Serious Sasaki is…”

Haise looked at Hide and Mutsuki,  “The three of us will get Torso before they do!  Saiko’s in charge of the house for now!”

“Ye-yes!!  I’ll do my best!”  Mutsuki squeaked out determinedly.

“Before we become united,”  Haise continued,  “I’ll have them grasp at their own limits…  Just watch, you brats!  You too, First Class Shimoguchi!  The Serious Sasaki…  The Sasarious will pull an all-nighter tonight to gather data!”

“He’s losing it,”  Hide whispered to Mutsuki.

And then Haise was upstairs, leaving Hide and Mutsuki alone.

“Hide…”  Mutsuki murmured, slowly grabbing Hide’s arm.  “I…  Are you  _ sure _ that…  What we talked about earlier…  It’ll work?  If it’s just the three of us…”

Hide blinked, but plastered on a reassuring smile,  “Yeah, it should!  Let me show you where it is!”

* * *

Cochlea was a grim, dark place.  Too many creatures resisded down within its depths--Kaneki once, Hide remembered.  If Hide listened, he could hear the sounds of shrieking, the closer they had gotten to the SS-floor, where Kaneki’s cell once was.

Hide couldn’t tell if those were Kaneki’s shrieks, or his own.

But Haiseki Shimnei was bringing them down.  The Quinx Squad was here for Donato.    _ Haise _ wasn’t going back in a cell.  Hide wasn’t going in one either.  Not now.  Not ever.

“...A human investigator with a built-in quinque…  The Director sure has some bold ideas.”  Haiseki mused.

“He does,”  Hide agreed,  “However, we’re effective.”  Was that the right word choice?  God…  It was so much more frustrating down here…  He was so sluggish; Hide’s brain wasn’t connecting dots as quickly, and the heightened senses he had been so used to relying on (as good as a ghoul’s) were at the level he used to have, in high school.  A tool Hide had once thought was so superior was now something he considered to be laughably pathetic.

“It’s fine, Mucchan,”  Haise whispered to Mutsuki,  “The walls are coated with qoinque steel…  The ghouls held into custody here are also weakened by an RC Depressant.”

“Ye-yes…”  Mutsuki whispered.

Hide frowned.  It was hitting Haise harder than it was hitting him; Hide could tell by the mispronounced and incorrect words--and if Hide felt like exhausted garbage, barely able to keep afloat, he couldn’t imagine how much worse it must have been for Haise.

“Oh?”

The door behind the three closed shut, a loud, audible sound, leaving the three investigators alone with the ghoul they wished to speak to.

Hide felt his brain’s fog begin to clear the slightest bit, and he looked to Haise and Mutsuki for a moment, before he directed his gaze to Donato Porpora.

“I was wondering who it was,”  Donato drawled,  “It’s you, Haise, Hide.  Nice timing. I was just bored.”

Hide and Haise approached first, sitting in the chairs provided, Mutsuki coming in after them.

“Where is your superior, Mado Akira?”  Donato inquired.

“She’s on a different case,”  Hide smiled.

“How is it, to be under a woman’s thumb?”  Donato asked.

“It’s pleasant,”  Haise laughed,  “as long as it’s an excellent thumb.  And how have you been, Porpora?”

“Haha…  Loose-lipped like always…”  Donato laughed as well,  “Oh…  There’s a new one with you today.  Little young, too.”

Donato slammed himself against the glass, leering at Mutsuki,  “Looks really tasty!  I want to selfishly rip apart that belly, and stuff my mouth full with those soft organs.”

Mutsuki staggered back in fear, making a sound of disgust.  Haise stood and gently led him back to a seat.

“Don’t tease him so.”  Hide said tactfully.

“Sit down,”  Haise murmured, shushing Mutsuki’s apologies.

“Alright.”  Donato sat, his demeanor instantly changing to something more amicable, as if he didn’t threaten to eat Mutsuki,  “What kind of investigation is this?”

“It’s about the ghoul known as Torso,”  Hide said as Haise brought up the data,  “His hunting areas are spread apart.  We think he’s using a vehicle as a means of transportation to get around Tokyo.  All of his victims to date have been assigned female at birth.  He’s earned himself the name Torso due to the fact that all of his victims have only had the torso taken.”

“I see…”  Donato mused,  “So he’s a torso-maniac.  For ghouls, the head is an extremely important part.  By completely understanding what he’s eating, it amplifies the excitement of the meal.  He satisfies himself with different parts while looking at the face…  Everyone has their own taste of having fun.  The head is no doubt the  _ face _ of the meal.  To humans, ghoul meals could be boring, since it’s garnished by just a single ‘flower’.”

Hide nodded, looking at Mutsuki in concern for a moment, to make sure Mutsuki was still with the land of the living.

“Not showing any interest in that ‘flower’,”  Donato continued,  “and just leaving it be…  He’s quite choosy with his food…  A picky eater, if you would.”

“Isn’t it because he’s afraid?”  Haise asked after a moment of introspection,  “The eye shows emotion, the mouth spits out words.  The face contains a massive amount of information.  He’s doing this in order to block that information.  What if we assume that?”

“A ghoul that’s aware of his own power…”  Hide mused,  “Yet is still afraid of humans…  The reason for that must be…”

“He’s either a ghoul that’s blended into human society,”  Donato concluded,  “or he’s a ghoul who’s hiding his identity and most likely has a normal job.  While being oppressed by his boss and clients, he’s skillfully deceiving his surroundings.  A job like that includes knowledge of the streets.  For instance--”

“A taxi driver!”  Hide said, following Donato’s steps.

Urie had been giving them both taxi receipts.  It must’ve been because it had already been narrowed down…  

“Thank you for your insights, Porpora.”  Haise said softly.

They left the room, Hide’s mind beginning to work.  Those areas Torso had been in…  And female clients…  What was the connecting factor?

“Sasaki…”  Mutsuki began,  “Why does the CCG let someone like that live?  When I look into that ghoul’s eyes…  It sends shivers down my spine.”

“He’s a very beneficial information provider for the CCG,”  Haise explained,  “That’s why the authorities are using him.  I don’t like the idea of it, but…  Someday, he’ll be disposed of, but until that day comes, Donato has to keep proving his worth.”

_ Like Haise.  Like me. _  Hide thought grimly.  If they weren’t useful, the CCG would get rid of them.  So they had to keep being useful.  Stay useful, stay under control, or Yoshitoki would have no problem having Arima kill them.

* * *

“Haise,”  Hide knocked on the door of Haise’s room, hours later,  “Haise, I think I put the connection together, of why just the torso.”

Haise opened the door after a moment, looking downright exhausted.

“May I come in?”  Hide asked softly.

Haise nodded, and Hide stepped in.  “If he’s going to leave the head behind, there’s no need to cut off both legs.”  Hide closed the door as he spoke.

“So it has more of a mental implication…”  Haise mumbled.

“‘So it doesn’t go away’?”  They both suggested in tandem.

“It’s insecurity,”  Hide nodded, “As long as the corpse has legs, it’ll look like it goes somewhere.  Like an abusive lover.”

“I see!”  Haise nodded,  “To him, the victim’s torso is a lover…  And he, of course, is the abuser kept in control of them.”

Hide nodded.  “There may be some sort of commonality with the ‘owners’ of the torsos.  If we can try contacting people who knew the victim again, and investigating the remains, we may find clues to Torso’s tastes.”

* * *

‘It looked like there was a  _ scar _ from her appendix operation…’

‘...From the  _ caesarean section _ when our son was born…’

‘She had her thyroid gland  _ removed _ because of an illness…’

‘She had  _ ten stitches  _ from an accident!’

‘Now that you say that…’

“ _ Scars _ ?”  Mutsuki’s question was uncomfortable as the squad began to look over the data they had gathered from interviews.

“It looks like Torso’s a ghoul who’s attracted to women with scars,”  Haise agreed.

“But Sasaki…  How does he know whether they have any scars before undressing them?”  Mutsuki looked more than a little uncomfortable at the prospects.

“Two possibilities I can think of,”  Hide began,  “Either he’s got a unique sense for scars or he kidnaps them without knowing if they do or not.  ‘I’m lucky if she has scars.  I only have to eat her if she has one.’  Only he knows how he deals with the torso…  He leaves behind the head and limbs and kagune secretions…”

“If he’s so picky about his prey,”  Haise added,  “he’s probably aiming for places those targets frequent.”  He pulled up a tablet, indicating a few places.

“These are…?”  Mutsuki tailed off, looking at the information on the tablet.  His eyes widened,  “The hospital commuting records…  Of all the victims.  They’re narrowed down to plastic surgery hospitals.”

“Look,”  Haise indicated,  “Torso’s hunting grounds are all spread around these circles, with hospitals as their center.”

They split the work.  Various plastic surgery hospitals had been divvied between the three, with the explicit orders to not get into  _ any _ taxis alone.  Haise had given Hide a look, to which Hide had only smiled wryly and lightly commented,  “I make no promises.  If Houji couldn’t keep me from going wild, I don’t think a Sasarious Look will either.”

Haise had been expecting by day twenty-five, for Hide to be the one to go stir-crazy and only find Torso by doing something stupid.

He wasn’t expecting Hide to call him up, yelling that Torso had Mutsuki, and he, Shirazu, and Urie were in pursuit from different locations.

Haise also wasn’t expecting to barely meet up with Hide in time for them both to draw quinque.  That ghoul they were looking at now, that wasn’t Torso.  That was Serpent.

Haise swung his quinque down, severing the kagune coming at the Quinx squad.

* * *

The resounding sound of the slap across Urie’s face rang across the room of the Chateau.  “How is a squad leader that endangers his squad members going to help?”  Haise asked coldly.

“Showing your back to the enemy is dangerous.”  Urie replied in the same tone,  “I considered the possibility of Serpent following us.  Was that a mistake worth hitting me for?”

“If you fought them head on, you’d be dead,”  Haise clenched his fists, shaking his head,  “You ghoul investigators have to run!  Even if your limbs are torn off!  As long as you live, there are more chances.  It’s game over when you die.”

Hide pushed himself between Haise and Urie, making them both take a step back.  “Urie,”  said Hide in the most professional voice he could muster,  “as of this moment, you are dismissed as leader of the Quinx Squad.”

If looks could kill, the glare Urie gave Hide could have caused more than one person’s death.  “In squad formations, the highest ranked typically takes command.”

“You’re right,”  Hide agreed,  “you’re also not the highest ranked.  That’s Haise and I.  And we’ve decided you’re no longer fit to be squad leader.”

“I can’t accept this.”  Urie’s voice was little more than a hiss.

“It’s an order from your superiors.”  Hide said grittily.

The room remained deathly silent, nobody daring to speak.  Hide sighed awkwardly, only to hear Urie cut across,  “Even though you’re both  _ ghouls _ .”

Hide felt his stomach drop out.  Ghoul wasn’t that far off of from ‘monster’ and it grated at the back of Hide’s mind, a voice (that sounded far too much like Hide’s own) adding on,  _ May as well let Matsuri stick a quinque in you,  _ ghoul.

“ _ Urie! _ ”  Shirazu screamed as he loudly kicked Urie across the room, knocking Urie into a wall,  “You  _ trash!! _  Sassan and Hide put their lives on the line!!  If you call either of them a ghoul, then you’re a shitty bastard worse than a ghoul!!  I’ll kill you right here!”

“Just try it,”  snarled Urie.

“Urie,”  Mutsuki cut across,  “I’d like you to apologise to Sasaki and Hide.”

Urie sneered at Mutsuki, the look slipping off as Haise cut across,  “It doesn’t matter what Urie says, the dismissal is final.  Besides, we’ve already decided on the new squad leader.”

“We’ve appointed Rank Three Shirazu Ginshi as the new squad leader.”  Hide followed up.

“Wait…”  Shirazu blinked incredulously,  “Me?  Wait a sec’, Sassan, Hide!  Isn’t this a smart person’s job?!  I did even worse than Saiko did in class!”

“The person who acts in the best interests of the team should take the role of squad leader,”  Hide said,  “Right now, that’s you.”

“Huh?”  Shirazu asked softly, oblivious to Urie’s glowering.  “Squad leader, you say…  What should I be doing?!”

“That’s for later,”  Haise said.

Haise meandered to the staircase, punching Urie lightly as he was passed.  “Urie.  Don’t be too rebellious, or I’m gonna eat you!  If you’re saying I’m a ghoul!”

Haise went upstairs.  Hide looked back at the squad.  Once he looked them all over, he went up the stairs, following Haise.  Hide could hear Haise sobbing, and the door slamming shut.  Hide’s heart ached, and he approached the door.  Hide leaned on it, knowing he couldn’t just leave Haise all alone.

Hide cooed softly, resting his head on the door, like he would have long ago.  “If you need me, I am here.  You can rely on me.”

* * *

“Wow…”  Haise breathed out as he, Akira, and Hide stood in their squad’s investigation room the next day.

“We don’t have first-hand information concerning Torso,”  Hide frowned,  “but..”

“Yeah,”  Akira agreed,  “with this information, we can make a fair guess at his range of activity.  Really, if Shimoguchi hadn’t been so unwilling, Torso could have been taken off the streets long ago...”  She looked up at Haise,  “Haise.  Only the people who were at the scene themselves know that you lost control.  So this incident won’t be mentioned to Shimoguchi, either.  As promised, the Quinx identified Torso’s face within the time limit.  Now you both can work him to your heart’s content.”

“Akira,”  Hide asked, frowning as he looked for anything on Torso’s residence,  “how was the investigation of Torso’s residence?”

“Shimoguchi’s squad is currently investigating Torso’s home,”  Akira said, pulling over the small debriefing they had, printed out from an email,  “It’s full of the torsos…  Even if you look at it as a ghoul’s habitat, it’s quite a bizarre view.  That said, we found something interesting in that guy’s ho--”  Akira’s phone blared, cutting her off.   Akira picked it up, sighing,  “It’s Mado.”

The nonchalant attitude Akira had faded, and she stiffened.  Akira pulled the phone away, looking at Hide and Haise,  “Shimoguchi Squad’s been attacked.  It’s SS rate Rabbit.”

* * *

Logically, Hide was aware that hospitals were places that people went to recover from things that had happened to them.  Hide wasn’t always a logical person, and could really only ever view them one way.  A hospital was a cold, empty place, where a person went in, and came back out not quite as one had gone in, and not always because a person had chosen it.

As the three members of Mado Squad walked in, Akira and Shimoguchi exchanged pleasantries, before Akira began to ask what happened with Torso.

There was a listless, dead man behind Shimoguchi’s eyes.  Hide could tell, as they talked.  Shimoguchi was physically here, but Hide knew too well that look, and where the man’s mind went crawling back to.

Hide had worn that look.  Akira had worn that look.  Hide was an  _ expert _ at knowing how grief marred at a person, carved out new flaws in a way that just simply hadn’t been there before.

People regretted surviving.  That’s why survivor’s guilt  _ existed _  And Hide could see it, rotting Shimoguchi from the inside-out.

* * *

“SS-Rated Rabbit?”  Haise asked as they drove down the highway.

“Rabbit’s one of the investigation subjects of S2 Squad, right?”  Hide frowned, biting on his lip.

“Yeah,”  Akira nodded as she turned the car,  “They think it’s a relatively young ghoul.  It appeared about three years ago in the Twentieth Ward, where it killed multiple investigators.  It’s responsible for the Seventh Ward’s Associate Special Class Investigator Hunt and such.  A ghoul who has increased power and presence over the years.”

Akira gripped the wheel,  “That ghoul, and the Fueguchi ghoul killed my father.”

Haise swallowed,  “Arima told me your father was an excellent investigator…”

Akira’s smile was terse, clearly put on for Haise’s benefit, and not because she felt like smiling.  “Arima learnt the basics of quinque from my father.”

“Both ghouls are now affiliated with the Aogiri Tree, then?”  Hide asked softly.

“Yeah,”  Akira nodded,  “Torso can now be considered one of the Aogiri.”

“Shimoguchi had no idea what those recordings in the taxi at Torso’s were used for.  I think Aogiri’s making him look for unknown data; this is one of the tactics we’ve seen--they employ ghouls lurking in the general public, and get them to do work.  Once the ghoul’s situation gets worse in human society, and Aogiri increases its own power.”

“The Tree already has a thick trunk and spreading branches,”  Akira nodded,  “Aogiri’s threat is now so great that we had to inform the general public…  Since Torso’s concealing himself behind the Aogiri, this case will be handed over to one of the squads from S1 to S3.  It’s no surprise, considering what happened to Shimoguchi Squad.”

“So now we’re useless again,”  Hide groaned.

“It’s more than likely you’ll be support for another squad,”  Akira corrected, before murmuring,  “I wonder if Shimoguchi’s alright…  He lost all his underlings, and was the only one to survive…  No matter how bold a guy he is, he’s got to be tormented by feelings of remorse.  It’s painful to lose the ones you’ve spent time with.”

Hide swallowed as he looked at Akira’s mournful profile.  She was thinking of Amon and Seidou, Hide knew.  And not just them, but her father, too.  Not that he could blame her; there were many moments when Hide missed the two investigators he had known, too.  (As frankly, he missed Amon and Seidou, too…  Though he loathed to admit he missed Seidou more.  There were moments, where, in another life…  Hide did his best to not dwell on it.)

* * *

“So, Sassan, Hide,”  Shirazu inquired as the Quinx squad walked down the streets of Tokyo,  “What’s gonna be Shirazu Squad’s new mission?”

Haise looked up from the papers he had buried his nose in, handing them to Shirazu for him to look.  “Our new target is Nutcracker.  Rating’s still undetermined.”

“How’d this ghoul get the name?”  Shirazu grunted,  “I thought a nutcracker was a kind of sweet.”

“Nope.  It’s literally something you crack…  nuts with.”  Hide shrugged,  “I’ll give you three guesses on how this one got her name.”

Shirazu looked at Hide.  Hide maintained the serious expression, and Shirazu’s face paled, his legs pressing together as he realised no, Hide was not joking.  This ghoul liked to crush and eat testicles.

“Since we lost track of Torso,”  Haise explained,  “the investigation on him is temporarily on hold.  We’re functioning as support for this investigation.”

“Nutcracker seems to have been in the Thirteenth Ward--that’s Suzuya Squad territory, so that’s who we’ll be working alongside, unless the case gets bounced to someone else,”  Hide added on, pointing out the list of names to Shirazu.

“Suzuya…”  Mutsuki mumbled,  “You mean  _ that _ Suzuya?”

“Yes,”  Haise confirmed,  “His knife skills are first class, so I was hoping he can teach you.”

“Are either of you on good terms with Suzuya?”  Shirazu asked.

“I think I am,”  Hide said,  “we were friendly when I first started working with the CCG, back when we were both a bit younger than you two.  The remainder of the Twentieth Ward investigators--and me; I was an assistant then--is Suzuya, Akira, Special Class Houji, and me.  Suzuya, Haise and I have been on a raid or two together since then.”

Shirazu nodded, looking through the papers once more.  “Can we get coffee and go home?  I want to look these over a bit before we crack the Nutcracker.”

“ _ Yes _ .”  Haise agreed enthusiastically,  “My treat today.”  And then, to Mutsuki and Shirazu,  “I’ve been going around all the tasty coffee shops.  It’s been my hobby since I was Rank Two.  I’ve managed to drag Hide out on coffee dates more than once.”

* * *

“...How do you pronounce this place?”  Shirazu frowned once they stopped in front of the coffee shop Haise had led them to.

“You know,”  Haise laughed awkwardly,  “I really have no idea.  Ray?  Reh?”

“Ri.”  Hide chimed in,  “It’s like the English word for reply, or re-do.  I mean, that’s what it looks like to me.”

“Well… shall we go in?”  Haise asked.

Without wasting another moment, the four stepped inside, and began to take in the details of the coffee shop.  It was warm, homey--with the building reminiscent of a coffee shop long past, where a few well-meaning words began a tragedy.

“This fragrance…”  Haise murmured,  “This shop will surely have some good coffee!”  And then he whispered,  “My nose kagune is whispering that to me!”

“Amazing RC Cells,”  Shirazu snorted.

“Nose kagune?”  Mutsuki laughed.

“I ain’t buying it until there’s an  _ americano _ in my hand,”  Hide teased.

“Hide,”  Haise groaned,  “have you tried  _ not _ diluting your coffee?”

“I did, once,”  Hide replied,  “when I chased the boy of my dreams and it all led to heartbreak and messy bedsheets.  Let me keep my watered down espresso, and  _ you _ drink your gross black coffee.”

“Look,”  Haise said, promptly ignoring Hide’s remark and indicating the direction in which he was looking,  “there’s also a beautiful woman.”

_ No. _

“Brother!  How many times do I have to tell you,”  scolded a young woman stepping out of the back, before she caught sight of the Quinx,  “to greet our customers…?”

Kirishima Touka looked even more beautiful than Hide remembered her being.  Maybe it was just a case of absence making the heart grow fonder, but Touka was so much more beautiful…  Her hair was short once more, lighter now, in a short bob that curled around her face, making her appear to be so much more delicate than Hide knew she was.

(How had she once spoken?  So much more bluntly, direct and to the point, Hide remembered.)

“Ah…”  Haise mumbled as he looked at Touka--who hadn’t introduced herself, Hide took note,  “We’d like…  Kids, what do you want?”

Shirazu and Mutsuki looked at each other, Shirazu saying “Black coffee” at the same time Mutsuki said “Flat white, please.”

“Two black coffees,”  Haise nodded, moving his hand to indicate they were for himself and Shirazu,  “an  _ americano _ ,”  pointing at Hide,  “and a flat white.” And a gesture to indicate Mutsuki.

Touka--no, not Touka, Hide reminded himself.  Couldn’t think of her as Touka, not unless she introduced herself like that--nodded and proceeded to step back towards the kitchen.  “I’ll have them out in a few minutes!  Feel free to sit wherever.”

Touka was hiding something.  She had walked back too quickly, too tersely.  Hide, frankly, found himself needing to know.  So as three of the four sat down, Hide said,  “Hey, I need to see a man about a horse.  Give me a minute.”

Without waiting for a response, Hide ducked into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.  Right…  He closed his eyes, putting a hand to his lips as he began to worry at his nails.   _ Just listen…  Just listen.  You have a pair of ears.  Put them to work, Hideyoshi. _

“--Yes, I’m certain it’s Kaneki.”  That’s Touka’s voice.  Hide pressed his back further into the wall, trying to get a better grasp in the sounds being made.

“That’s  _ impossible _ .”  Another voice.  Male.  Deeper.  Unusual cadence to it, as if the speaker was trying to force an accent that they didn’t have naturally.  Oftentimes, in Hide’s experience, it happened from people who dabbled in foreign languages without using them as anything more than to pepper a conversation.

“It’s about as impossible as him being with an old friend of his, Tsukiyama,”  Touka snapped at the person she was talking to.

Tsukiyama.  Hide internally swore.  Tsukiyama must have meant  _ Shuu _ , the heir; if Hide remembered correctly, there was only Shuu and his father. The Tsukiyama family owned a major business, and was allied with a few other major corporations.  And the Tsukiyama family business  _ always _ came back clean when the CCG would surprise them with RC cell tests…  Usually, a business had one or two ghouls who had managed to sneak in, but would inevitably be rooted out.

_ Great _ .

“What old friend?  We  _ are _ Kaneki’s old friends,  _ mon lapin _ \--”

“ _ Human _ friend, Tsukiyama,”  Touka hissed,  “and don’t call me that!  There’s Doves out there, and I, frankly, don’t want to bet on one of them not knowing your stupid flower language and getting me caught.”

That word probably meant something that Touka didn’t want to remember.  Hide didn’t blame her.  Hide would like nothing more than for the past to go away--or to go back and warn his past self of the road his choices would bring him down.  But Hide couldn’t.

Instead, Hide ducked out of the bathroom, hearing Touka or Tsukiyama begin to make coffee.  As he approached the table, he put a big smile on his face, fitting right next to Haise, teasing him lightly about nothing in particular.

* * *

Hide could hear the kids heading towards Saiko’s room.  Hide paid vague attention, mostly in the way that parents paid vague attention to their children.  They were talking about something, some loud rattling--nothing Hide felt was important.  If it was important, they would yell.

No, the files that were a few years old that currently sat on Hide’s desk, were more interesting to Hide.  Without having to look at them, Hide could visualise the contents inside.  Old photographs, missing persons fliers, maps with marked locations over all of Tokyo, lists of locations, with dates and times attached, all on top of a copy of a signed book, years old, never opened.

Hide looked at the records of everything he had from when Kaneki had gone missing, and sat at the desk.  Hide hadn’t looked at these since the raid on Anteiku, a complete lifetime ago.

Was there a way to describe how Hide felt like he was digging up the grave of a dead man?

There wasn’t.  So Hide flipped through the information at hand, trying to make a heads or tails of the situation--or at least try and pin together what other connections there were between Kirishima Touka and Tsukiyama Shuu, and Kaneki Ken.

Haise wasn’t Kaneki, Hide reminded himself as he began to pull out some paper, beginning to make a connections map with Kaneki’s name at the center, with Haise’s under in.  Alternatively, Haise shouldn’t be.  But there were moments, oh there were moments where Hide could swear, he saw the man he loved, buried down under habits that he was certain could have been one of Kaneki's.  But Hide wasn't allowed to do that.  He couldn't project Kaneki onto Haise, and expect to find any results.  That was cruel of him.

Kaneki to Touka.  Listed:

“Kaneki--->Touka: friends, co-workers.   
Haise--->Touka: known at coffee shop Haise’s been to once.”

Kaneki to Tsukiyama.  Listed:

“Kaneki--->Tsukiyama: possible friend   
Haise--->Tsukiyama: Tsukiyama is aware of Haise.  Haise doesn’t know him.”

Quinx were added on, Hide was added on, Nishio Nishiki was added on, coworkers from Anteiku were added on, Mado Akira was added on, Arima Kishou was added on, Amon Koutarou, other various relationships from the CCG, every last person who knew Kaneki Ken in this life or the last that Hide knew, eventually found their names on the growing map.

As Hide put the pencil down to begin connecting dots, he glanced at a pile of pictures, shoved aside.  Hide and Kaneki.  High school graduation.  Hugging each other, beaming at a camera, with the date scribbled under it.

Hide wiped at his face and swallowed sadly.

_ I wanted you to come home with me. _

There was a knock at the door.  Automatically, Hide began to try and mash the papers he had been writing on together, not wanting them to be seen.  “Who is it?”

“It’s Haise.  We need to talk.”

It was impossible to get the information hidden before Haise came in.  So as Haise opened the door, a stormy look on his face, Hide spun around in his desk chair, putting on an anxious smile.

“Be honest with me,”  Haise began.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Énouement: The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.


	8. Probably the End

Listen kids, this fic was fun, and I was mostly writing it for myself, but between the way the tg fandom's treated me and my best friend, and the fact that i've never gotten enough feedback for me to actually want to keep writing this fic, it's done.  Fun plot points that were going to happen, but didn't, include, but weren't limited to:

  * torso was gonna be killed by mutsuki during the auction
  * hide was gonna literally eat furuta
  * hide was also probably gonna die



anyways it was fun, nobody thought to look up, so long, thanks for the fish.  i'm writing for d. gray man right now, same pseud and all

-connor


End file.
